AdRoll vs Branch

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.

Branch (Branch Metrics) is a mobile linking and measurement company founded in 2014 in California by Alex Austin, Mike Molinet, Mada Seghete and Dmitri Gaskin. It says more than 100,000 brands use its platform. Its core job: make links open the right screen inside an app across web, email, social, ads and SMS, and measure which campaigns drive installs and in-app actions.

The platform is split into products: Engagement for deep links that survive app installs and handle thousands of platform edge cases, Performance for mobile attribution (multi-touch, SKAdNetwork Conversion Studio, fraud detection, cohort and LTV analytics), Activation for branded short links and QR codes, Banners for web-to-app Journeys, LinkHub link management and data exports. Ivy is Branch's AI product for growth teams. Attribution is sold in Basics, Essentials and Enterprise tiers without public prices; Basics comes with a free trial.

Branch fits consumer apps with heavy web-to-app, email and referral traffic where reliable deep linking matters as much as attribution. Pricing can climb steeply with usage, and its attribution suite is less dominant than AppsFlyer, the market leader for paid user acquisition, or Adjust, which is strong in gaming. Teams using Firebase Dynamic Links need a replacement since Google shut that service down in August 2025.

If you mainly need deep links, ask Branch for an Engagement-only quote; if you need an MMP, run Branch against AppsFlyer and Adjust and compare SKAN modelling and partner coverage with your own ad networks.