AdRoll: Effort level vs. volatility
Those who read this blog know I am a fan of the vision of AdRoll in terms of solving for the two most important macro issues going forward: Small publishers and branded marketers. I am not affiliated with AdRoll in anyway.
From the press release and TechCrunch coverage it appears they are truly focused on bridging the pain points on both sides.
AdRoll will work because of the power of ability to manage groups. Some of the tough operational things that will face AdRoll as it scales will be: fraud, managing “group participation” rulesets and with that, volatility.
Some of the more global competititive issues facing them will be adserver integration and where they sit in the daisy chain of decisioning. I thought of this while reading the TechCrunch message board interaction between Pubmatic’s and AdRoll’s CEOs. It is interesting to note the language that the Pubmatic CEO used, specifically “we look forward to adroll as another option for publishers.”
At the end of the day, one of the companies has to come first in the daisy chain of decisioning and I would surmise, given that AdRoll wants to cater to brands, that they need to be the first option.
Both Pubmatic and AdRoll give smaller publishers a much better option than a blind network in gaining more for their inventory. The extent they can make this scale across a wide swath of brand marketer dollars will be the key to both systems.
Hopefully neither business model will come down to what VP of Sales joins or the tempermental nature of brand dollars.
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