Creator marketplace startup Agentio, which built an automated platform for YouTubers to sell 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 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.
“It’s really important for creators to be able to partner with a lot of brands and the right brands to monetize their content. Because of our platform, there’s competition for ad slots on the creator side, and for the first time we’re receiving multiple offers,” Myers told TechCrunch over the phone.
The company said that apart from building the matching engine, it has also built a robust measurement stack to help brands understand campaign performance and reward 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.
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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. It would take years for marketing teams to go through all of a creator’s content and understand whether it is brand-safe or not. By introducing these new features, we have been able to optimize our marketing teams’ 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 is building capabilities powered by insight models to provide both brands and creators with feedback about their campaigns, what’s working, and what could be improved.
“We want to tell creators how they can be more successful on behalf of brands. Today, it’s very difficult for creators to know why their content is working, why it’s not working, and how they can improve the performance of their ads. We want to build technology that helps creators understand how they can continue to improve their performance to get better renewals and build long-term partnerships,” said Leopold.
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 those spaces that has escaped true marketplaces. Many founders have tried to build their companies here but ended up falling into the agency quicksand,” she said.
“Historically, this has been a space that has been mediated by people like agents and agencies. That creates a lot of friction, and for this to really be a viable market, there needs to be a minimum viable size for creators and their audiences. That’s why marketplaces, when they work well, can unlock a lot of value.”
The company says it wants to build solutions for other platforms as well, but for now it will continue to focus on YouTube.
