Since 2006, we’ve built and expanded an innovative advertising and marketing platform to fuel the growth of our customers. A lot has changed in 15 years – and a lot will change in the future. So, in addition to building a strong foundation in AdTech and MarTech, we’re also creating a culture of innovation and agility, which empowers our teams to run fast and ship new products when customers need them most. 

We recently saw this in action, as AdRoll’s Connected Social Ads project launched and shipped exciting new product functionality in just four months! A collaboration between Product, Product Design, Product Marketing, and Engineering teams, the project to integrate customers’ social ad channels into a single platform was a monumental milestone for AdRoll’s Marketing Operating System. And this milestone was achieved thanks to the team’s ability to identify an acute customer need and move fast to organize teams and work streams internally to innovate our technology to bring customers value.

“The most meaningful part of our contribution was successfully releasing a proven-value product within a tight timeline,” said Jessica Grist, Software Engineering Team Lead. “We've shown that we can respond quickly yet thoughtfully to a constantly-evolving market and pivot our approach as necessary to get users what they want.”

For their efforts, we celebrated this team internally by awarding them an AFT All Star Award in the Agility category! Because we know the value of acknowledging big wins on a company-wide level and the people who fuel them.  

The Connected Social Ads project launched last November when customer feedback proved the need for connecting Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok channels to AdRoll with expanded functionality. Completing the project meant AdRoll’s eCommerce and direct-to-consumer customers could import all social campaigns into AdRoll for holistic, multi-channel reporting and easily edit all imported social campaigns in one place – the AdRoll platform. Learn more about AdRoll’s Connected Social Ads feature.

“Not only were we able to move quickly, but we also were able to come together and brainstorm ways to release value incrementally,” said Kirby Anderson, Sr. Product Manager. “This allowed us to test with customers with an actual product…so we could iterate and learn to best set ourselves up for success when we released it at the end of the quarter.”

Creating a significant product in just four months is no easy feat, but moving quickly to meet the needs of our customers by creating innovative products is a big component of our culture at NextRoll. 

“I am most proud of how many different teams and people came together and contributed to this project,” said Marty Dill, Sr. Manager, Software Engineering. “Everyone had a tight schedule and a lot of moving parts across teams and departments, but we all worked together to make it happen. We started with the general idea of allowing users to connect their social channels and ended with a working product. Agility at its finest!”

Through the Connected Social Ads project, our teams have continued to flex and build muscle around agility. Now with this foundational work done to connect new social ads channels into one platform, we have a robust playbook to use for future integrations and a growing track record of creating innovative products that serve customers’ evolving needs going forward. 

Want to check out what other exciting project the NextRoll tech team is working on? Head over to our NextRoll Engineering Blog!