New York-based Agentio, which is building a programmatic advertising platform to support content creators, has raised $12 million in a Series A round led by Benchmark, a Silicon Valley venture firm that has backed iconic startups such as Uber, Instagram and eBay.
Craft Ventures and New York’s AlleyCorp, which led Agentio’s $4.25 million seed round, also participated. Other investors included Singapore’s Antler, Florida’s Protagonist and Chicago-based Permanent Capital, and angel investors such as Cameo co-founder Steven Galanis, movie producer Michael Sugar, SoulCycle co-founder Elizabeth Cutler and YouTube creator Cody Ko, according to Ad Exchanger.
Growth Momentum
Founded in 2023 by the duo of Arthur Leopold, who was previously a senior executive at celebrity video-sharing app Cameo, and former Spotify engineer Jonathan Meyers, Agentio fancies itself as The Trade Desk of the future, bringing Google-like performance and efficiency to the community of content creators. Leopold serves as Agentio’s CEO while Meyers is chief technology officer.
“We’re ushering in the future of brand and creator partnerships by enabling authenticity and trust to be purchased at scale. We aim to shift a meaningful portion of the $600B digital ad spend market to creators — to enable them to create, build, and live off their work,” Agentio said in a blog post.
Since its seed round about a year ago, Agentio says it has grown in scale and capability. Its proprietary AI technology, for example, uses contextual data to recommend relevant creator content to advertisers, and enables easy delivery of ads on YouTube.
During the beta stage, Agentio’s customers have included brands such as DoorDash, Mint Mobile, Bombas and MasterClass. While the company claims over 2,000% year-over-year growth, Agentio says many advertisers have seen up to 15x better return on advertising spend (ROAS) when compared with other digital video ads.
Commercial Real Estate
MacKenzie Companies
Advertising / Media / Communications / Public Relations
Nevins & Associates
Financial Services / Investment Firms
Chesapeake Corporate Advisors
Commercial Real Estate
Monday Properties
Venture Capital
Blue Delta Capital Partners
Internet / Technology
Foxtrot Media
Expanding to Other Channels
“From a brand’s perspective, this is the same kind of media buying experience as you’d get on Facebook or Snap or TikTok,” Leopold told Ad Exchanger.
“We’re building this to be multiplatform and to be utilized in any language, in any market,” Leopold added. “You look at companies like The Trade Desk, and there’s no reason why Agentio couldn’t eventually be as large as these ad platforms because of the power, the authenticity and the performance of this ad unit.”
Agentio will use the latest funding to advance its advertising platform, which now works only on YouTube, on channels such as Twitch, Discord and Snapchat. Its current platform is expected to emerge from beta later this year.
