Creator marketplace startup Agentio builds an automated platform for YouTubers to sell ad slots to brands, raises $12 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark with participation from returning investors Craft Ventures and AlleyCorp was procured.
With the new funding, the startup aims to expand its market for YouTubers and improve its AI technology to determine whether creators are brand-safe for companies.
Agentio was founded in 2023 by former Cameo president Arthur Leopold and former Spotify automated content marketing team leader Jonathan Meyers. To date, we have raised more than $16 million in total funding. Last year, the company launched its platform and began inviting brands and creators to collaborate.
Since then, the startup has worked with brands like DoorDash, Mint Mobile, MasterClass, Notion, and HelloFresh, as well as creators like Nick DiGiovanni, Matty Matheson, Rhett & Link, and Chad Chad. The platform currently has around 50 brands and over 1,000 creators. The company said it is still working on an invitation-only basis for both parties to maintain quality.
According to Agentio, brands have gradually increased their spending on the platform, increasing by an average of 2.35x from Q3 to Q4 of 2024. We also achieved profitability, but raised capital to achieve greater scale.
“For creators, being able to partner with many brands and the right brands to monetize their content is very important. Because of our platform, there is competition for ad slots on the creator side, and for the first time we have multiple offers. Myers told TechCrunch by phone.
The company said that apart from building the matching engine, it has also built a robust measurement stack to help brands understand how their campaigns are performing and give credit to creators. Apart from impressions, the company can also measure link clicks, QR code scans, conversion rates, and more through its Shopify integration. The company says brands use this data to sign renewal contracts and long-term partnerships with creators.
The startup has implemented AI to determine whether a creator’s content is brand-safe. The platform shows a brand's risk profile in relation to its creator's content.
“With our platform, you can instantly understand which content and creators are brand safe, whereas it would take years for marketing teams to go through all of a creator’s content to understand if it is brand safe. By introducing these new features, we were able to optimize our marketing team's time,” said Leopold.
The startup added that it uses a large-scale language model to allow brands to customize their definition of brand safety and match creators accordingly. The company has built capabilities that leverage insight models to provide both brands and creators with feedback about their campaigns, what's working, and what could be improved. I'm doing it.
“We want to tell how creators can be more successful on behalf of brands. Today, it's important for creators to understand why their content worked, why it didn't work, and how they can be more successful with advertising. It's very difficult to know how well you'll perform. We're building technology that helps creators understand how to keep improving their performance to get better updates and form long-term partnerships. We want to do that,” Leopold said.
Sarah Tavel, general partner at Benchmark, said there is a lack of a true market in the creator economy space and Agentio can fill that gap.
“The creator economy is one of the spaces that has escaped true marketplaces. Many founders have tried to build their companies here, only to end up stuck in the quicksand of agency.” she said.
“Historically, this has been a space that has been mediated by people like agents and agencies. This creates a lot of friction, and for this to be a truly viable market, it needs to be a viable market for creators and their audiences. You need the smallest possible size, which is why you can unlock so much value from a marketplace if it works well.”
The company says it wants to build solutions for other platforms as well, but for now it will continue to focus on YouTube.