AdRoll vs AdWords

[HashtagHustler]

Morning everybody!

Does anybody have any experience with AdRoll? I know that AdWords and AdRoll are not directly related but I often hear them compared. Any thoughts on SEO/Lead gen/traffic from them?

[Ray-pp]

I have direct experience with Adroll.

I've used Adroll for retargeting campaigns and they generally were successful campaigns. I don't like their revenue attribution and reporting too much, and preferred to track through Google Analytics for the most accurate data.

Unless you've saturated your Adwords market, I suggest maximizing it before moving into the Adroll network.

If you sell any nutritional type of products you may get put into their 'less quality' network, watch out for that.

[HashtagHustler]

Thank you.

Part of the problem is that all of the keywords we need to use are incredibly expensive. Some upwards of 700$ for google AdWords, so the AdRoll became more appealing.

[Ray-pp]

I'd run a test campaign then - if the ROAS is right for your business, then spend!

[john4math]

We use both Adwords and Adroll.  My preference is always to do everything myself, and Adwords gives me complete control.  With Adroll, you'll have reps who are generally very responsive and good, but you still need them to help manage and optimize your campaigns.  So I'd second what Ray-pp is saying.  Use Adroll when you're ready to expand your reach outside of the Google Display Network, once you're already running (very) profitable retargeting campaigns in Adwords.

In your comment below, it sounds like you're comparing your search clicks with display clicks.  Search clicks are always more expensive since there's implied intent in the fact the user is searching for something.  With $700 CPCs, retargeting is probably really important for you to try and recapture that user once you got them to your site.  You could try some retargeting through YouTube as well if display ads are working.

If you have Adwords reps, I'd strongly recommend trying to get into the SCM beta, which is what the industry generally calls "search retargeting".  This would allow you to target users searching for those expensive queries (on Google, Bing, & Yahoo) after that fact via display ads.  It's in beta, but I think it's a fairly open beta at this point so if you have reps, you can probably get into it.  I couldn't find a good Google article about it, but this sums it up nicely.