Agentio wants to be The Trade Desk of paid creator content.
The startup, which operates a programmatic platform for buying and selling sponsored creator-read ads integrated with YouTube content, announced Wednesday that it raised $4.25 million in seed funding.
Agentio is the brainchild of Arthur Leopold, former president of celebrity video-sharing app Cameo, and Jonathan Meyers, a former engineer at Spotify who was instrumental in building the platform’s automated marketing solutions. Agentio essentially combines Cameo’s interface for buying sponsored content from celebrities and Spotify’s automated ad tech into a single self-serve platform. Agentio also offers contextual recommendations for which creator content is relevant to an advertiser.
“From a brand’s perspective, this is the same kind of media buying experience as you’d get on Facebook or Snap or TikTok,” said Leopold, the company’s co-founder and CEO.
Programmatic spon con
Agentio fills the role of both a DSP and SSP (one could argue it’s a YouTube creator ad network), and its interface mimics some aspects of programmatic buying. However, it is not running auctions for ad inventory and is not integrated with outside demand or supply partners, instead functioning as a platform for direct buys with YouTube creators.
YouTube creators who want automated ads sell programmatic ad slots through Google AdSense, which is only compatible with pre-roll and mid-roll video. Host-read ads baked into the video content itself can’t be sold through AdSense.
In order to sell host-read ads, creators typically have to work directly with a buyer, typically a brand account manager, who approves the final ad spot before it can be published as part of the creator’s video content. But such an approach obviously lacks scale.
As a result, YouTube creators only sell host-read ads – by far their most lucrative ad unit – on 10% to 25% of their inventory, according to Leopold. Even a major YouTube creator like MrBeast had to put an announcement on LinkedIn that he’s looking for Q4 advertisers, Leopold said.
Meanwhile, on the buy side, Leopold claimed that one of YouTube’s top three advertisers told him it sees 15x better return on ad spend from sponsored creator content than it does from traditional mid-roll ads.
That means advertisers want host-read ads, which seem to resonate with audiences, but it’s impossible for brands to buy these ads and for creators to sell them at scale. So Agentio uses programmatic tech to enable this inventory to be transacted on in a more automated fashion.
Creators can list ad slots for upcoming content on Agentio’s open marketplace. Buyers can choose the creator inventory they want to purchase or use the platform’s AI-based algorithm to find contextual matches. Once an ad is purchased, the creator records the spot and uploads it to the platform for the advertiser’s approval.
The platform is currently in beta, but plans to go into wide release by the end of the year. Agentio is targeting its pitch to YouTube’s top advertisers and prioritizing onboarding creators that are relevant to the advertisers currently using the platform. (Leopold declined to name any advertiser clients at this time.)
Spending plans
Agentio will use its funding to grow its headcount and expand its platform – which is currently only compatible with YouTube – to other media channels, including Twitch, Discord and Snapchat.
The company, which was founded in March, currently consists of six employees, including the two founders. Hiring priorities include bringing on more engineers to develop the platform and its contextual recommendation algorithm, as well as more sales and partnerships personnel.
The funding round took place over the summer and was co-led by VC firms Craft Ventures and AlleyCorp, the latter of which was co-founded by former DoubleClick CEO and President Kevin P. Ryan.
Additional investors include Cameo co-founder Steven Galanis, movie producer Michael Sugar, SoulCycle co-founder Elizabeth Cutler, YouTube creator Cody Ko and several agency, brand and ad tech executives, as well as VC firms Antler, Protagonist and Permanent Capital.
Agentio sees its immediate growth opportunity in peeling off some of the roughly $31 billion in ad spend conducted through Google AdSense for YouTube’s programmatic inventory. But within two to three years, the company’s goal is to have grown beyond YouTube to other opportunities.
“We’re building this to be multiplatform and to be utilized in any language, in any market,” Leopold said. “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.”
