AdRoll reorganized on Tuesday by splitting its business into two parts: a new unit called RollWorks focused solely on B2B, and the legacy AdRoll business that services small to mid-size ecommerce companies.
Each business division has its own P&L and sits under the newly formed parent holding company AdRoll Group.
Toby Gabriner, current CEO of AdRoll, will become CEO of AdRoll Group and president of RollWorks.
Aaron Bell, co-founder and chief of product for AdRoll, will lead innovation and product development for AdRoll Group. And Scott Gifis, VP and managing director of North America, will be promoted to president of AdRoll.
The company will not reduce headcount as a result of the reorg, claimed Gabriner. In fact, there are currently 40-odd positions open, he added.
“We finished 2017 as our biggest revenue year,” Gabriner said. “It was also the year we reached profitability.”
He added that AdRoll’s model will continue to evolve in 2018, as ad and mar tech keep converging.
Of course, AdRoll’s business has already evolved. It originated as a retargeter but has since enhanced its platform to include prospecting, a data co-op, email personalization and more.
But that expansion also created a bit of a perception problem.
“One challenge with our structure prior was that we were positioning ourselves as all things to all people, which became challenging for customers to understand what they were getting from us and what we specialized in,” Gabriner said.
The company hopes its reorg will help it improve clarity in its go-to-market strategy.
AdRoll Group will serve as the technology backbone for its two operating divisions and explore new product innovation like video.
AdRoll will service SMB customers buying display or social advertising using its self-serve model, while RollWorks will manage larger B2B enterprise accounts, solutions like account-based marketing and integrations to CRM and mar tech providers like Marketo and Salesforce.
Because B2B sales cycles tend to be longer, they also tend to be more predictable than media.
Thus, RollWorks is designed as a way for AdRoll to bring in more recurring SaaS revenue.
“We will continue to have and be bullish about our media business, which has expanded from retargeting to prospecting and an email component, as well,” Gabriner said. “But there’s a number of different aspects we want to bring to bear … We’re doing more around data enrichment on the RollWorks side, and have made a big investment in attribution.”
AdRoll is focused on building a durable, standalone business, Gabriner said.
“It can be hard to predict what happens, but I’d say we’re as healthy as we’ve ever been – in our customer set, pipeline, revenue growth and profitability,” Gabriner said, when asked if the company is setting the stage for strategic options in light of its reorg. “We have a lot of optionality as we think about moving the business forward.”
