Swivel Develops Agentic Infrastructure For CTV Advertising

Agentic media buying is a key topic in ad tech discussion circles, but its application to TV and streaming ads is still in its early stages. TV and streaming channels have traditionally relied on direct human relationships, making it challenging to implement agentic buying. According to AdExchanger, Swivel is one startup working to change this by developing an agentic infrastructure for CTV advertising.

Swivel was founded by ad tech entrepreneurs and investors, including Frans Vermeulen, Matt Dearborn, Rich Lin, and Joseph Hirsch. The startup aims to automate manual tasks in publisher ad operations, from campaign optimization to pricing adjustments. This could potentially simplify the process for media sellers and buyers, making it more efficient and effective.

The company's goal is to create an end-to-end system of agents that handles all aspects of campaign management, from media planning to optimization and reporting. This system would enable media sellers to optimize their yield and provide a more streamlined experience for buyers. However, developing agentic solutions for every step in the CTV chain and gaining wide adoption may be a challenging task.

Initially, Swivel focused on the middle to tail end of the agentic media workflow, particularly in yield optimization. However, the company has now shifted its focus to the front end of the workflow, including campaign functions such as planning, forecasting, and ad ops rule-setting for guaranteed deals. This expansion of services may help Swivel to better support media sellers and buyers in the CTV space.

Swivel's approach involves using multiple agents, each responsible for a specific part of the campaign buy. This includes budgeting, bid trafficking, pacing, yield management, and post-campaign reporting. While some publishers may be hesitant to entrust their entire media-selling process to AI, many are interested in using one or two agents to simplify their workflow without disrupting their entire ad ops process.

The use of agentic automation raises concerns about fragmentation in the CTV media space. With multiple vendors evolving into AI solutions, CTV advertisers and ad sellers may feel overwhelmed by the number of agents involved. However, specifications within the Ad Context Protocol (AdCP) may help to address this issue by providing a standardized framework for online ad supply chain agents to communicate and negotiate.

Agentic media buying on TV screens faces an uphill climb, but it offers distinct benefits, including the ability to automate ad sales for non-standard formats and sequential media. As the CTV space continues to evolve, Swivel plans to expand its focus into the retail media space, which is seeing a rising overlap with CTV. This expansion may provide new opportunities for the company to develop its agentic infrastructure and support media sellers and buyers in this growing space.