Toby Gabriner
Adtech executive who became AdRoll CEO in November 2017, led the 2018 RollWorks split, and renamed the parent company NextRoll in 2019.
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- Country
- United States
- Known for
- CEO of AdRoll (2017-2019 era) and of the renamed NextRoll
- Prior roles
- President of Carat Interactive; CEO of [x+1]; president and CEO of Adap.tv; CEO of Adzilla
- AdRoll entry
- Joined as advisor, then president, then CEO
- RollWorks role
- CEO of AdRoll Group and president of RollWorks (2018)
Overview
Toby Gabriner is the adtech veteran who took over AdRoll from its co-founder, split it into two businesses, and then renamed the whole company — the executive who turned a retargeting specialist into NextRoll. He had nearly two decades of digital advertising experience before AdRoll, including serving as president of Carat Interactive, CEO of [x+1], president and CEO of Adap.tv, and CEO of Adzilla, and he joined AdRoll first as an advisor before serving as its president (MRWeb). In November 2017 he became AdRoll’s CEO, replacing co-founder Aaron Bell, who moved to the full-time post of chief product officer (TechCrunch; MRWeb).
The handover and the split
Gabriner’s promotion was presented as a partnership handover. Bell, who would oversee engineering, product, user experience, data science, and supply, said he and Gabriner had forged a remarkable partnership over the previous twelve months, and welcomed the chance to draw on his passion for innovation in the new role (MRWeb). At the time AdRoll had nearly 500 employees, with six additional offices in New York, Chicago, Tokyo, London, Dublin, and Sydney (MRWeb).
Within months Gabriner reorganized the company around the problem he had inherited: a business that had outgrown its label. In February 2018 AdRoll split into RollWorks, focused solely on business-to-business marketing, and the legacy AdRoll business serving small to mid-size eCommerce companies, each with its own profit-and-loss statement under the newly formed AdRoll Group parent (AdExchanger). Gabriner became CEO of the group and president of RollWorks, Bell became chief of product for the group, and Scott Gifis became president of AdRoll (AdExchanger). The rationale, in Gabriner’s words, was clarity: positioning the company as all things to all people had become challenging for customers to understand, in terms of what they were getting and what it specialized in (AdExchanger). The timing was strong — 2017 had finished as AdRoll’s biggest revenue year, and the year it reached profitability (AdExchanger).
The NextRoll rename
The second act came in September 2019. The AdRoll Group became NextRoll Inc., a change Gabriner said was designed to reflect the company’s moves beyond retargeting: “We have, for the longest time, been pigeonholed as a retargeting company, but the reality is that we have really been evolving” (TechCrunch). The AdRoll retargeting business did not go away — it continued as one business unit — while RollWorks, which offered business-to-business marketing tools, became a second unit, and a third, NextRoll Platform Services, launched as a marketing-technology-as-a-service offering, selling access to AdRoll’s underlying technology through application programming interfaces as Channels-as-a-Service and Audiences-as-a-Service (TechCrunch).
Gabriner was candid that the rename had been planned all along. When RollWorks launched the previous year, both business units had continued under the AdRoll Group umbrella, but that was always, in his words, a temporary placeholder; a year and a half into the RollWorks brand launch, with the brand firmly planted on its own two feet, moving to the NextRoll brand made sense and had always been planned (TechCrunch). The pitch to customers was the same one behind the split: externalize what AdRoll had built for itself — services customers had already been pulling the company to provide — and make them commercially friendly for developers and other ad products to use (TechCrunch).
What this profile does not claim
This profile does not assert Gabriner’s education, hometown, or early-career backstory, which appear only in snippets not read in full. It does not give an Adap.tv acquisition price. It does not claim any post-NextRoll role for Gabriner, and it does not date his departure from NextRoll or the transition to Roli Saxena: the sources read establish Gabriner’s 2017–2019 era and Saxena’s later era, but not the handover timing between them.
Timeline
- 2017
- Gabriner, who joined AdRoll the previous year as an advisor and most recently served as president, is promoted to CEO, replacing co-founder Aaron Bell (who becomes chief product officer); he becomes CEO in November 2017.
- 2018
- AdRoll splits into RollWorks (B2B) and the legacy AdRoll business under the AdRoll Group; Gabriner becomes CEO of the group and president of RollWorks; 2017 was AdRoll's biggest revenue year and the year it reached profitability.
- 2019
- The AdRoll Group is renamed NextRoll Inc. on September 10, 2019, to reflect moves beyond retargeting; the AdRoll business continues as a unit, RollWorks as a second unit, and NextRoll Platform Services launches as a third.
What we could not verify
These claims came up in research and could not be confirmed. They are recorded here rather than published as fact or quietly dropped. If you hold a source that settles one, please tell us.
- MediaPost's RollWorks article misnames Gabriner as "Tony Gabriner" once; this profile uses Toby throughout and does not cite MediaPost for his name.
- Education (Occidental BA, Boston University MBA), San Francisco roots, and community-college backstory appear only in interview/database snippets not read in full and are not asserted.
- The Adap.tv acquisition price by AOL ($465 million) appears only in trade snippets not read in full and is not asserted.
- Post-NextRoll roles (including later CEO posts) appear only in a database snippet not read in full and are not asserted.
- The date Gabriner left NextRoll, and the timing of the transition to Roli Saxena, are not asserted: the sources read give only the 2017-2019 endpoints and the 2025-era Saxena endpoint.
Sources
3 sources (3 tier 2), each opened and read against the claim it supports. Every source is independent of the subject; no first-party material is cited. See the source policy.
Built only from sources read in full: MRWeb's 2017 promotion report, AdExchanger's 2018 reorganization article, and TechCrunch's 2019 rename article. Wikipedia served only as a lead index and is not cited.
- Supports: AdRoll promoted Toby Gabriner to CEO replacing co-founder Aaron Bell (→ full-time CPO); Gabriner nearly two decades digital advertising experience, President of Carat Interactive, CEO of [x+1], President and CEO of Adap.tv, CEO of Adzilla; joined AdRoll last year as advisor, most recently served as President; company nearly 500 employees, offices New York, Chicago, Tokyo, London, Dublin, Sydney Open original source
- Supports: Gabriner, current CEO of AdRoll, to become CEO of AdRoll Group and president of RollWorks; Bell chief of product, Gifis president of AdRoll; 2017 biggest revenue year, profitability reached; reorg rationale (all things to all people confusing customers); RollWorks for larger B2B enterprise accounts, ABM and CRM/martech integrations Open original source
- Supports: AdRoll Group renamed NextRoll, Gabriner CEO quote on pigeonholing as retargeting company; AdRoll business continues, RollWorks B2B tools, NextRoll Platform Services launches as marketing-technology-as-a-service (Channels-as-a-Service, Audiences-as-a-Service); Gabriner became CEO November 2017; RollWorks launched last year, year and a half into brand launch at rebrand, always planned, temporary placeholder umbrella Open original source
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