Commerce media infrastructure provider Kevel, led by CEO and founder James Avery, has raised $52 million to expand its AI decisioning capabilities and global operations.
The company says it powers more than 100 commerce media networks, including Tesco, Dollar General and Home Depot. Its AI ambitions center on giving retailers greater visibility into and control over automated advertising decisions.
From the release:
“The funding will accelerate Kevel’s next stage of growth, with transparent AI at the center of its product roadmap. The company will continue developing its AI decisioning and optimization capabilities so that every ranking, bid and placement decision is explainable, auditable and configurable by retailers.”
Kevel’s API-first infrastructure allows retailers to use its AI technology or bring their own data and models, giving them greater control over how their advertising businesses operate.
Read: “Kevel Secures $52 Million to Scale AI-Driven Infrastructure for the Future of Commerce Media” (Oct. 21) – press release
From tipsheet: Kevel’s original proposition, dating back to its Adzerk days, was that businesses should own their advertising networks. Now it’s extending that philosophy to the AI models operating them.
There’s a parallel here with advertisers seeking greater control over AI-powered ad systems at Google and Meta. As AI assumes more responsibility for optimization, customers want greater visibility into the decisions being made and the ability to influence them.
But Kevel introduces another dimension: Retailers can bring their own data and AI models rather than relying exclusively on vendor-supplied algorithms.
That sounds a bit like custom algorithm companies such as Chalice and DoubleVerify’s Scibids, which enable advertisers to bring custom AI decisioning to programmatic media buying.
The emerging possibility: A more composable advertising stack in which proprietary data and AI decisioning operate independently of the infrastructure executing them.
LLMs & CHATBOTS
ChatGPT ads expand globally, court brands
OpenAI is expanding its advertising business on two fronts: global reach and new formats designed to attract brand advertisers.
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- Yesterday: “We launched ChatGPT ads in 26 new countries today, bringing our total up to 89 nations. Great news for both local advertisers and for global brands looking to expand their international reach. We also announced over 100,000 advertisers have used our platform.” – David Dugan, Head of Global Ads Solutions, OpenAI on LinkedIn
- Coverage: “ChatGPT, now a more visual medium, is going after more brand advertisers. New image ads are about to crop up, and a pitch deck is circulating. That’s the takeaway as ads come to image generation, which Ad Age has learned could start running as early as this week.” (Oct. 20) – Garett Sloane, Senior Editor of Technology and AI, Ad Age on LinkedIn
Read:
AGENCIES
Agencies challenge DSP economics in AI era
Does AI democratize programmatic buying or reinforce the power of the platforms that control it? Everyone wants their margin, after all.
Digiday says that independent agencies are pushing The Trade Desk and Amazon DSP (now Amazon Ads Agent) for better fees and direct platform access, arguing that their buying power deserves greater negotiating leverage.
One 15-person New York agency exceeded The Trade Desk’s $100,000 monthly spending threshold but was still required to work through a reseller. The agency reportedly pays 17% to The Trade Desk and another 12% to reseller Mogl.
The agency has since shifted most of its spending away from The Trade Desk.
Read: Indie agencies want The Trade Desk and Amazon DSP to acknowledge their buying power with negotiating leverage (Oct. 21) – Digiday
From tipsheet: AI promises to make sophisticated media buying accessible to smaller agencies by automating work traditionally performed by specialists. But greater operational efficiency doesn’t necessarily translate into cheaper platform access.
AI is changing the boundary between intermediation and infrastructure. Functions that once justified intermediary fees may become automated, while infrastructure connecting buyers, sellers and inventory could become more valuable.
If AI commoditizes media buying operations, who captures the savings? Agencies and advertisers or the platforms controlling access?
Commoditization doesn’t guarantee democratization.
CONNECTED TV
What about those Netflix ad tech delays?
Netflix’s decision to lower its 2026 advertising revenue forecast in Tuesday’s Q3 2026 earnings release has captured the advertising news cycle this week.
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- What sounds bad: Going from $3 billion to approximately $2.7 billion in projected 2026 ad revenue. The company cited delays in new advertising products and partner integrations.
- What sounds good: The streaming company still expects advertising revenue to grow more than 80% this year.
Co-CEO Greg Peters defended the company’s advertising technology strategy on yesterday’s earnings call:
“So getting to the integration model that we want sometimes takes a bit more work with our partners, but we strongly believe that a modest short-term hit for a better long-term strategic position is a good ultimate trade-off.”
Read:
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- Netflix Q3 2026 earnings call transcript (Oct. 20) – Netflix
- Netflix Revenue Growth Slows as It Overhauls Programming Units (Oct. 20) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
From tipsheet: Netflix ad tech can’t quite keep up with its commercial ambitions? That’s a big whiff for Netflix’s executive team, especially with product guy Greg Peters as co-CEO and the company’s vaunted engineering resources at its disposal.
Did the company wait too long to build its own ad stack? Probably. Did it underestimate the effort required to compete effectively in advertising? Probably.
How does it catch up? Patience, perhaps. Or does Netflix need to buy some capabilities?
CONNECTED TV
Netflix rolls out more ad tech, too
Netflix also announced an expansion of its advertising capabilities on earnings day.
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- Netflix Ads Suite Has Better Buying, Better Planning, Better Results (Oct. 20) – Netflix
- Netflix Unlocking New Targeting and Measurement Capabilities with The Trade Desk (Oct. 20) – The Trade Desk
FINANCIALS
Earnings reports – Meta
Companies exposed to AI’s growing role in advertising and marketing are reporting their latest quarterly financial results, including:
Meta
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- Markets: Meta stock was up 3% in after-hours trading yesterday.
- Stat: “Average price per ad increased by 14% year-over-year.”
- Company: “Meta Reports Third Quarter 2026 Results” (Oct. 21) – Meta
- Read: “Meta posts Q3 revenue beat and strong guidance” – CNBC
- Read: “Meta Will Split Stock, Create New Class to Fund AI Spending” – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
PLATFORMS
Meta advances gen AI for ad recommendations
Mobile Dev Memo analyst Eric Seufert examines Meta’s GenRecs Tokenization technology, which allows AI models to recognize similarities among ads, products and content without relying as heavily on their individual performance histories.
The technology uses Semantic IDs to help models transfer learning across similar items, addressing what Seufert calls “the cold start problem for new content.”
The larger ambition: A recommendation system in which generative AI predicts which ads and content users should see, potentially combining the traditional processes of retrieving and ranking candidates.
Meta reports a 0.35% lift in conversions from GenRecs Tokenization combined with its GEM and Adaptive Ranking Model technologies.
Read:
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- “Meta’s GenRecs Tokenization and the generative retrieval opportunity” (Oct. 20) – Eric Seufert on Mobile Dev Memo
- GenRecs Tokenization: Transforming Ads Recommendation at Meta with Stable Model Vocabulary (Oct. 19) – Meta
LLMs & CHATBOTS
Developments
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- Financials: “AI Drives Record Growth in Information Technology” (Oct. 21) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
- Frienemies: “OpenAI models are coming to Google Cloud” (Oct. 21) – OpenAI
- Medicine: “How Claude designed protein binders against scorpion neurotoxins” (Oct. 21) – Anthropic
MORE
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- Industry confab: “Inside ANA, 4As and IAB’s closed-door talks on AI, talent development and ad measurement” (Oct. 21) – Ad Age (subscription)
- Approved: “FTC Order Preserves Competition in Digital Advertising Ecosystem as Part of Publicis’s Acquisition of LiveRamp” (Oct. 19) – U.S. Federal Trade Commission
- Agentic commerce: “AI Agents Bring New Headaches to Online Sellers” (Oct. 16) – The Wall Street Journal (subscription)
- More Salesforce/Braze: “So why does Salesforce want to acquire Braze? Here are 10 good reasons…” (Oct. 21) – Martin Kihn, SVP Strategy, Salesforce on LinkedIn