Adjust vs AdRoll

Adjust is a mobile measurement partner (MMP) founded in Berlin in 2012 and acquired by AppLovin in 2021 in a deal valued at about $1 billion. It tells app marketers which ad networks, campaigns and creatives drove installs, in-app events and revenue, so budget can move to the channels that actually pay back. Its SDK runs inside iOS, Android and Unity apps.

The platform covers attribution and deep linking, Datascape dashboards and cohort reporting, a Fraud Prevention Suite that blocks click spam and fake installs, and support for Apple's SKAdNetwork and AdAttributionKit privacy frameworks. Add-on modules include InSight for incrementality testing with synthetic control groups, Audience Builder, CTV AdVision for connected-TV campaigns and SpendWorks for ad-spend mapping. The free Base plan covers up to 1,500 attributions per month; Core and Enterprise are custom-priced annual contracts.

Adjust suits app publishers, games studios and fintech or ecommerce apps with real paid user-acquisition budgets. AppsFlyer is its biggest rival with a larger partner ecosystem, while Singular leans harder into cost aggregation. Northbeam and Rockerbox, also in our catalog, solve web and DTC attribution rather than app installs, so they are not like-for-like replacements.

In May 2025 Adjust launched Growth Copilot in beta, an AI assistant that answers reporting questions in plain language and, with Pulse, can publish scheduled AI reports. When negotiating, ask for fraud prevention to be bundled, since it is often quoted as a separate add-on.

AdRoll is a cross-channel advertising platform from NextRoll, the San Francisco company that also runs the B2B account-based marketing product RollWorks. It started as one of the first self-serve retargeting tools and still does that job best: it follows site visitors who did not convert with display and social ads, then brings them back with dynamic product ads that show the exact items they viewed.

Around retargeting, AdRoll adds prospecting audiences, email marketing, audience segmentation and a multi-touch attribution dashboard, so a small team can run display, social and email from one place without managing each network separately. Opening an account and installing the pixel is free; you pay for the media you buy at dynamic CPM rates with no minimum spend, cross-channel attribution and social ads are add-ons, and managed services and ABM packages are quoted by sales. Integrations with Shopify, BigCommerce, WooCommerce and Salesforce make setup quick for online stores.

AdRoll fits SMB and mid-market e-commerce brands and B2B companies that lack an in-house paid media specialist. Experienced media buyers usually get more control and lower costs inside Meta Ads Manager and Google Ads directly, and reporting can overlap or conflict with what those platforms claim. Compared with Criteo, AdRoll is easier for small budgets; compared with running Google and Meta retargeting yourself, it trades some control for convenience and a single view of performance.