ROAS PPC Outpaces the Giants and Achieves 300% ROAS with AdRoll

I saw this firsthand while working at a large software corporation. For about a decade, I focused solely on managing Google and Microsoft ads until a private equity group acquired the company. They hired a marketing agency to manage the brands, and I went from managing brand accounts to overseeing the agency.

I didn’t like what I saw.

The bigger an agency becomes, the harder it becomes to provide high-quality service because they have to find a way to service a large number of clients for as little as possible. Big agencies don’t (or can’t) always take the time to learn the ins and outs of a smaller client’s business, and they’re the ones who often need the most help.

So, I founded ROAS PPC, a marketing “anti-agency.” We believe the best way to learn what works is to become so familiar with a client’s business that they feel we’re an extension of their in-house team rather than an external marketing agency. Our team prides itself on being highly available and attentive to clients’ needs, delivering around-the-clock support to nurture their success.

Scaling without sacrifice

Despite their size, smaller companies still want to grow, and if a campaign is successful, clients want to scale it for even greater results. That’s always the challenge: how do you provide continual growth nonstop without stagnating? That’s what brought us to AdRoll.

We were experiencing significant success with Google display ads and had ramped up heavily using Google display prospecting, but we got to a point where we were noticing diminishing returns. Getting more traffic would require us to increase our cost-per-click. Instead, we decided to explore platforms outside the Google Display Network that offered the same cost-per-click as Google.

When I first started in digital marketing, AdRoll was one of the major players for retargeting. Over the years, I interacted with many online ads that came from AdRoll.com—a clear sign that the company had evolved to keep up with trends. With a particular client in mind, I decided to test AdRoll and determine whether it would meet our expectations.

Achieving a 300% ROAS for eManualOnline

That client was eManualOnline, a top client dedicated to testing, continually iterating, and improving parts of its website to improve conversion rates. These climbing conversions, coupled with a good product, allow it to bid higher and be more competitive in the Google ads auction.

eManualOnline’s most important metric is return on ad spend (ROAS). We started with retargeting and gave our AdRoll onboarding team a lofty goal of 300% ROAS, which is much higher than they achieved on Google ads.

After spending $5,000 in June 2024, the team saw a return of $11,271—a ROAS of 126%. eManualOnline had anticipated it would take more time to see results, so they were pleased to see such a high return right out of the gate.

The AdRoll team continued to optimize the campaign, replacing lower-performing ads. The following month, they spent $4,913, and this time, they saw a return of $14,782—hitting the 300% target.

Instead of offering vanity metrics, AdRoll provides what our team cares about for our customer: the value they got for their investment.

Priority placements, detailed reporting, and an unparalleled support team

In addition to providing ROAS, we’ve seen three key benefits to working with AdRoll.

• Superior support. Although I knew AdRoll offered a self-service option for onboarding, and I was pleasantly surprised to discover they offered a more managed service model, too. From ensuring that we set up our audiences properly to guiding us through campaigns, the AdRoll onboarding team was highly engaged and gave us the structure to ensure our retargeting efforts were effective immediately. They were also responsive, replying to every email within 24 hours.
• Ad placement quality. ROAS PPC is fairly small, and so are many of our clients. Despite our size, our ads were featured on sites like CNN.com—a big difference from seeing our clients’ ads on lower-quality websites that weren’t necessarily appropriate for the target audience. AdRoll ensures the placements are a much better match. For a client in the automotive repair industry like eManualOnline, for example, it’s great to see that 99% of the URLs are mechanic forums or repair websites. It’s a great early indicator of the quality of traffic and that the ads reach the right people.
• Detailed reporting. The reporting capabilities within AdRoll allow my team to see which ads and placements perform best. They’re highly detailed, which enables us to continually adjust our strategy and keep ads performing at high levels, maintaining and increasing profitability while helping our clients grow their businesses.

Expanding benefits to other clients

As we expand and continue to realize impressive results, I see ROAS PPC leveraging AdRoll for more clients. While the ideal use case has been for retargeting campaigns with a client that receives a lot of traffic, we also see advantages to using the platform for new businesses that want to get their name on top-quality websites and increase brand awareness through contextual targeting.

The AdRoll platform has many uses, and partnering with AdRoll was the right decision for my team. We’ve learned a lot from working with them, and they provide tremendous value to our clients and their businesses.

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