AdRoll MD Marius Smyth On Repositioning, Staff & Diversity

E-commerce platform AdRoll has undergone a serious facelift in the last six months.

Staff cuts saw Australia’s Sydney office shrink from a team of 28 to just seven at the end of last year during a global “repositioning” of the company.

Now, AdRoll is steadfastly working with small to medium business, or as AdRoll EMEA/APAC MD Marius Smyth calls them, “ambitious companies”.

Speaking to B&T, Smyth said the move is paying off, though AdRoll still faces challenges.

“If you start thinking about how we repositioned the company; the customer segment we’re focused on now is the small to medium companies, and the big challenge they face right now is they want to try and attract new customers online and convert them,” Smyth said.

While the company has already seen some “green shoots” from the makeover and repositioning, Smyth is quick to admit it has come with a cost, namely the staff redundancies.

When asked how the cuts have paid off for AdRoll, Smyth said, “It’s important to come back to the reason why it happened, we were looking to continue to focus on this small to medium customer segment which meant we had to make some challenging decisions within the business.”

“Those challenging decisions were necessary for figuring out where should we invest our resources,” he added.

“We wanted to double-down on product and engineering for our business globally, in order for us to build a better product for our customer segment.”

While the Australian office was impacted by these decisions, Smyth said the benefits are being felt worldwide.

“Part of the changes we made in Australia last year has allowed us to focus more on this segment, not just for this market but global as well,” Smyth said.

“In terms of current staff; hopefully all the guys that left the business who were very talented, hopefully they feel we’ve done ok by them.”

“The staff that have remained we’ve given them the task of focusing on those small to medium businesses and stabilise them, so we can move into growth for the market which we’ve managed to do in the first quarter.”

Prior to the staff shrinkage, AdRoll was known throughout adland for throwing lavish parties, such as the annual AdRoll Roller Disco.

Despite the staff being reduced to seven, Smyth said AdRoll is still championing the importance of gender diversity an inclusivity in the workplace.

B&T is pushing for more diversity and equality in adland, with our Changing the Ratio event, as well as the Women in Media Awards. Get your tickets now.

Speaking on diversity, Smyth said, “It absolutely starts from leadership, from my level, from executives, it’s something I’m passionate about, I’m trying to solve the issues not only here but across the company.”

“I think the number one thing in terms of trying to build an inclusive environment is to go and ask your staff what that looks like, I think we’ve done a really good job here in Australia, we’ve got a really diverse group even with the staff we still have on the ground and not only from a gender diversity perspective but also cultural diversity.”

“The buck stops and starts with me, I think we’ve done a decent job in Australia,” he added.

Smyth was in the country to speak with AdRoll’s Australian clients, which include brands like Budgie Smugglers, Dermalogica and Ribs & Burgers, about their experience working with the company.

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AdRoll diversity Staff