Rokt: the $480M/year ad network behind Uber & Lyft

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Rokt is a an ad network and SaaS for ecommerce brands and retailers that want to monetize checkout with bundled 3rd-party offers.

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#b2b

#ecommerce

Jan-Erik Asplund

Published May 19th, 2024

TL;DR: Sacra estimates that Rokt generated $480M of revenue in 2023, up 52% year-over-year, as brands looked to their ad network built on first-party data in advance of the third-party cookie extinction event coming in 2024. For more, check out our full Rokt dataset with model and sources.

Key points from our research:

In the early 2000s, Rokt co-founder Bruce Buchanan saw an opportunity to supplant travel agencies and 2x their profits by cross-selling add-ons like hotel bookings and rental cars to customers immediately after booking a flight. Since the off-the-shelf technology for cross-selling at checkout didn’t exist, he left his job at low-cost airliner Jetstar, acquired the affiliate marketing agency Rocklive, rebranded it to Rokt, and pivoted around the idea of an ad network that would grow ecommerce brands by helping them cross-sell at checkout.

Rokt found product-market fit with their SDK that big ecommerce retailers like Ticketmaster integrate with to show relevant 3rd-party offers like parking and dining reservations at checkout, when customers are already primed to buy them. Rokt takes 50 cents on every dollar spent by brands to advertise offers across Rokt’s network of ~3,000 ecommerce partners, which includes Wayfair, Domino’s, Spirit Airlines, Poshmark, and AMC Theatres, with 7 cents gross profit after covering their costs.