AdRoll

Overview

AdRoll is a unified marketing platform focused on enabling e-commerce businesses to manage their advertising and email campaigns. Established in 2007, the company specializes in retargeting, allowing businesses to re-engage website visitors and past customers with targeted advertisements across multiple digital channels. The platform is primarily designed for small to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) seeking to expand their online reach and convert browsers into buyers without extensive technical overhead.

The core functionality of AdRoll includes creating and managing display ads, social media ads, and email marketing sequences. It unifies these channels into a single dashboard, which can be beneficial for marketers aiming for a cohesive customer journey. Beyond retargeting, AdRoll also supports brand awareness campaigns, helping businesses reach new audiences who may not have previously interacted with their brand. This involves using data points such as browsing behavior, demographic information, and interest-based signals to identify potential customers.

AdRoll's system leverages machine learning to optimize ad placement and bidding strategies, aiming to improve campaign performance over time. This includes dynamic creative optimization, where ad content is automatically adjusted based on viewer behavior and product catalogs. For instance, if a user views a specific product on an e-commerce site, AdRoll can dynamically generate an ad featuring that exact product, complete with pricing and availability, to display on other websites or social media platforms. The platform also offers tools for audience segmentation, allowing businesses to group customers based on their engagement level, purchase history, or other custom criteria, and then tailor specific marketing messages to each segment.

The developer experience with AdRoll is primarily centered around its web-based user interface. While it integrates with various popular e-commerce platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce, and marketing tools, explicit public-facing API documentation for extensive custom development or programmatic control of core advertising functions is not a primary advertised feature. This suggests that businesses with highly custom integration requirements or those needing deep programmatic access might find the platform's direct developer offerings less extensive compared to platforms built with an API-first philosophy. However, its existing integrations streamline setup for common e-commerce use cases, simplifying the technical burden for many SMBs.

AdRoll positions itself as a tool for businesses to consolidate their marketing efforts across channels, from prospecting to conversion, and aims to provide measurable results through its analytics and reporting features. This includes tracking impressions, clicks, conversions, and return on ad spend (ROAS), allowing businesses to evaluate the effectiveness of their campaigns and make data-driven decisions. The platform also emphasizes compliance with data privacy regulations such as GDPR and CCPA, providing tools and features to help businesses manage user consent and data handling practices responsibly, which is crucial for operating in various global markets.

Key features

• Retargeting Ads: Displays targeted advertisements to users who have previously visited a website or interacted with specific content, aiming to re-engage them. This includes site retargeting, email retargeting, and CRM retargeting.
• Brand Awareness Ads: Campaigns designed to introduce a brand to new audiences who have not yet interacted with the business, utilizing demographic and interest-based targeting.
• Email Marketing Automation: Tools to create and send automated email sequences based on user behavior, such as abandoned cart reminders, product recommendations, and welcome series.
• Cross-Channel Advertising: Management of ad campaigns across multiple platforms including web, social media (Facebook, Instagram), and email, through a unified dashboard.
• Audience Segmentation: Ability to create specific audience segments based on criteria like browsing history, purchase behavior, and demographic data for more personalized messaging.
• Dynamic Creative Optimization: Automatically generates and optimizes ad creatives by pulling product information directly from a business's e-commerce catalog, tailoring ads to individual user interests.
• Campaign Analytics and Reporting: Provides detailed insights into campaign performance, including impressions, clicks, conversions, cost per acquisition (CPA), and return on ad spend (ROAS).
• GDPR and CCPA Compliance Tools: Features designed to assist businesses in adhering to global data privacy regulations, including consent management and data handling practices.

Pricing

AdRoll offers a tiered pricing structure that includes a base platform fee plus ad spend. The pricing details below are current as of May 2026. For the most up-to-date information, consult the AdRoll pricing page.

Common integrations

• Shopify: Direct integration for e-commerce stores to sync product catalogs and customer data, enabling dynamic product retargeting.
• WooCommerce: Plugin available for WordPress-based e-commerce sites to connect store data for ad campaigns and email automation.
• Magento: Connects with Magento e-commerce platforms to facilitate data synchronization for targeted advertising.
• Google Analytics: Integrates to provide enhanced performance metrics and cross-platform reporting by combining AdRoll data with broader website analytics.
• Mailchimp: Syncs email lists and campaign data for combined email marketing and advertising strategies.
• Salesforce: Allows for CRM data integration, enabling more precise audience segmentation and retargeting based on customer relationship management information.

Alternatives

• Criteo: Specializes in performance marketing, offering personalized retargeting solutions for large retailers and brands, often with a focus on deep integration with e-commerce platforms.
• RollWorks: (An AdRoll Group company) Focuses on Account-Based Marketing (ABM) for B2B companies, providing tools for identifying, engaging, and measuring target accounts across multiple channels.
• Outbrain: A native advertising platform that helps brands distribute content across premium publisher sites, often used for content amplification and discovery rather than direct retargeting.
• GoodFirms also compiles a list of top retargeting platforms that can serve as alternatives.

Getting started

While AdRoll primarily operates through a web-based UI, integrating the AdRoll pixel (a JavaScript snippet) is the fundamental step for any e-commerce site to begin tracking user behavior and enabling retargeting. This pixel collects anonymous data about visitors, such as pages viewed and products added to a cart, which then informs AdRoll's advertising algorithms. The following example demonstrates how to implement the basic AdRoll pixel on a website. This script should be placed within the <head> section of every page on your site to ensure comprehensive tracking.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
  <meta charset="UTF-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
  <title>My E-commerce Store</title>
  <!-- AdRoll Pixel -->
  <script type="text/javascript">
    adroll_adv_id = "YOUR_ADVERTISABLE_ID"; // Replace with your actual Advertisable ID
    adroll_pix_id = "YOUR_PIXEL_ID";       // Replace with your actual Pixel ID
    (function () {
      var _onload = function() {
        if (document.readyState && !/loaded|complete/.test(document.readyState)) {setTimeout(_onload, 10);return}
        if (!window.__adroll_loaded) {__adroll_loaded=true;setTimeout(_onload, 50);return}
        var scr = document.createElement("script");
        var host = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://s.adroll.com" : "http://a.adroll.com");
        scr.setAttribute('async', 'true');
        scr.type = "text/javascript";
        scr.src = host + "/j/roundtrip.js";
        ((document.getElementsByTagName('head') || [null])[0] ||
          document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0].parentNode).appendChild(scr);
      };
      if (window.addEventListener) {window.addEventListener('load', _onload, false);}
      else {window.attachEvent('onload', _onload);}
    }());
  </script>
  <!-- End AdRoll Pixel -->
</head>
<body>
  <h1>Welcome to Our Store!</h1>
  <p>Explore our latest products.</p>
  <!-- Your website content goes here -->
</body>
</html>

To obtain your specific adroll_adv_id and adroll_pix_id, you will need to log into your AdRoll dashboard. These unique identifiers link the pixel data to your AdRoll account, allowing you to create and manage campaigns based on the collected visitor information. Once the pixel is installed, AdRoll will begin collecting data, and you can proceed to configure your retargeting audiences and launch ad campaigns directly from the AdRoll platform interface.