The retargeted advertising space is becoming highly lucrative, finds retargeting platform AdRoll, which announced today that it had passed a $100 million run rate, up from $50 million last year.
The 6-year-old company claims to have more than 10,000 customers across 100 countries and was one of the first platforms to become a Facebook Exchange partner.
“AdRoll continues to innovate and has invested heavily in the much talked about Facebook Exchange (FBX),” the company noted in a press release. Last year, AdRoll integrated its LiquidAds product, which lets advertisers show consumers ads for items they were recently browsing, into FBX. Adroll also released a self-service retargeting tool for Facebook’s Exchange.
Facebook said earlier this year that it serves about 1 billion ad impressions each day from more than 1,300 advertisers through FBX. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg threw some cold water on FBX, though, commenting that the Exchange was “actually a very small part of our business” during the company’s Q2 earnings call this summer.
Even though FBX plays a small part in Facebook’s overall business, it appears to be powerful for some of its partners. Another FBX partner and retargeting specialist, DSP Triggit, said it was on track to earn gross media billings of between $50 million and $100 million this year and that its revenue grew 779% from June 2012, at the same time it started beta testing FBX, to June of this year.
DSP Triggit CEO Zach Coelius demurred on commenting further about its work with Facebook, except to tell Adexchanger, “I think the real story is just how big a deal FBX has been. We just attached ourselves for the ride and it took us really far really fast.”
Other Facebook partners, however, are seeing the opposite in terms of profits. Business Insider reported that Compass Labs, a Facebook “preferred marketing developer,” was pulling out of the social network’s advertising business. In addition, Syncapse, another Facebook PMD, recently declared bankruptcy.