AdRoll Raises $70M

There's a good bit in The Innovator's Dilemma tracking the decrease in disk sizes over time and how the leaders of the last generation could never connect with the customers of the next. At one point there's a guy from a big company at the time complaining that they made the new 4.5" disks and there was no market, while at the same time there's someone who's in the market for them who can't find them at the big companies, even though they're clearly there (think this was at the same conference even).

Maybe AdRoll has better focus in general, maybe they do a better job of selling to a much larger group of mom and pop customers than Google and Facebook which may inevitably wind up focusing on big brand problems. It's usually not enough to have the same checklist features.

A few reasons - but high level Google and FB didn't always support easy remarketing integration, hence a lot of big media agencies and companies are "grandfathered" into using services like AdRoll. It takes businesses a long time to switch service providers (and media agencies especially for a number of industry structure related reasons).

The same thing happened in Search Marketing software - initially lots of 3rd party companies moved in to offer software which enabled services beyond what Google enabled directly (Marin, Kenshoo, Efficient Frontier, etc...). Overtime Google has significantly increased the arsenal of tools available when buying direct from them, making it really tough to be a 3rd party search software provider, as you're basically just increasing the cost of the media.

I work at Perfect Audience. We're in the same space as Adroll.

People sign up for these services because they want a single place where they can manage all their audience data, a single place where they can create and optimize all their campaigns, a single conversion tracking system for all their retargeting, and a greater focus on support.

My roommate does sales for AdRoll, and it always sounds like he's saying "I'm trying to get [client] on Adderall"