Agentio raises $12M from Benchmark for its YouTube ad marketplace

Creator marketplace startup Agentio, which has built an automated platform for YouTubers to sell their ad slots to brands, has raised $12 million in Series A funding led by Benchmark with participation from returning investors Craft Ventures and AlleyCorp.

With the new funding, the startup aims to scale its marketplace for YouTubers and bolster its AI tech to determine if creators are brand-safe for a company.

Agentio was founded by ex-Cameo president Arthur Leopold and former Spotify Automated Content Marketing team lead Jonathan Meyers in 2023. To date, it has raised over $16 million in total funding. Last year, the company launched its platform and started inviting brands and creators to work with them.

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 now has around 50 brands and over 1,000 creators. The startup said it is still working on an invite-only basis on both ends to maintain quality.

According to Agentio, brands have gradually increased their spending on the platform, with a 2.35x jump on average from Q3 to Q4 2024. It has also achieved profitability but raised the money to achieve a larger scale.

“It’s incredibly important for creators to be able to partner with a number of brands and the right brand to monetize that content. Because of our platform, there is competition for ad slots on the creator side, and they are receiving multiple offers for the first time,” Meyers told TechCrunch over a call.

The company mentioned that apart from building the matching engine, it has also built out a robust measurement stack for brands to figure out the performance of a campaign and give credit to creators. Apart from impressions, the company can also measure things like link clicks, QR code scans, and conversion rates through Shopify integration. The startup said brands use this data to sign renewals or form long-term partnerships with creators.

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The startup has implemented AI to determine if a creator’s content is brand-safe. The platform shows a risk profile to brands in relation to a creator’s content.

“With our platform, we can instantly understand what content and creators are brand safe. It would take years for marketing teams to go through all the content of a creator to understand if they are brand-safe. As we have brought these new capabilities, we have been able to optimize the time of marketing teams,” Leopold said.

The startup added that it uses large language models to let brands customize their definition of brand safety and match them with creators accordingly. The company is building capabilities powered by its insights models to provide feedback on both the brand and creator’s side about campaigns, what is working well, and what could be improved.

“We want to inform creators how they can be more successful on behalf of brands. Today, it is really challenging for a creator to know why their content worked or why it didn’t work and how they can perform better in advertisement. We want to build technology that enables creators to understand how they can continue to drive performance to get better renewals and form long-term partnerships,” Leopold said.

Sarah Tavel, general partner at Benchmark, said the creator economy space has lacked a true marketplace, and Agentio can fill that gap.

“The creator economy is one of those spaces that has eluded a true marketplace. A lot of founders have tried to build a company here and they have ended up in the quicksand of being an agency,” she said.

“Historically, this has been a space that has been intermediated by people — agents and agencies. That creates a lot of friction and a minimum viable size for the creator and their audience for this to be a really viable market. That’s why a marketplace executed well can unlock a lot of value.”

The company said it wants to build out its solutions for other platforms as well, but for now, its focus remains on YouTube.