Swivel targets CTV ad operations with a network of specialized agents
Swivel is developing agentic tools to automate tasks across connected-TV advertising, with an initial focus on publisher operations and a longer-term ambition to support more of the CTV campaign process. The startup’s approach reflects the distinct conditions of television and streaming, where advertising has historically relied more on direct relationships and manual coordination than web display buying.
Swivel was founded by ad tech entrepreneurs Frans Vermeulen, formerly of FreeWheel, and Matt Dearborn, Rich Lin and Joseph Hirsch, co-founders of SpringServe. Hirsch described the company’s aim as building an end-to-end system of agents that can assist with campaign management, from planning through optimization and reporting. The broader objective is agentic infrastructure across the CTV advertising chain, including functions that contribute to media sellers’ yield optimization.
From yield management to campaign planning
The company’s focus has shifted over time. Hirsch said Swivel initially concentrated on the middle and later stages of the agentic media workflow, particularly yield optimization. It is now also working on earlier campaign tasks that occur before media is purchased, including planning, forecasting and setting ad operations rules for guaranteed deals.
Rather than offering one consolidated agent to run every function, Swivel has multiple agents assigned to different parts of a campaign buy. Hirsch identified budgeting, bid trafficking, pacing, yield management and post-campaign reporting among the tasks those agents can handle. The structure allows a publisher to consider automating selected processes without handing over its entire advertising operation.
That distinction matters because publishers may be reluctant to change established workflows all at once. Hirsch said some clients prefer to use only one or two agents and choose which tasks they want to outsource. Adoption, therefore, may involve integrating automation into existing operations in stages, rather than replacing a publisher’s ad operations team or system in a single move.
Interoperability remains a challenge
Adding agents does not automatically make CTV buying simpler. The market already includes a range of vendors and technologies, and an expanding set of AI-based tools could add another layer of fragmentation for sellers and advertisers to navigate. For an agentic model to work across companies, the systems involved need a way to identify authorized participants and exchange information.
Hirsch pointed to the Ad Context Protocol, or AdCP, as one effort to establish standardized communication and negotiation protocols for agents in the online advertising supply chain. One AdCP specification, adagents.json, lets publishers declare which agents are authorized to sell their inventory. Hirsch compared its role to sellers.json, which provides information about entities authorized to sell advertising inventory.
AdCP is collaborative with Prebid and differs from frameworks developed by IAB Tech Lab, including AAMP and ARTF. That landscape illustrates that standards and compatibility are part of the practical work ahead: publishers need control over which agents can act on their behalf, while participants need agreed methods for agents to interact.
CTV formats offer a potential use case
Swivel’s case for agentic buying also rests on the variety of CTV inventory and ad formats. Sponsorship placements, home screen ads and pause ads can vary among streaming apps, smart TV models and buying channels. Hirsch said those differences make certain placements difficult to arrange programmatically, particularly when publishers have not adopted common standards.
Industry vendors and organizations have announced standardization efforts for home screen and pause ads, but broader adoption takes time. Hirsch argued that agents could automate sales for formats that are unavailable or challenging to buy through programmatic channels. He also identified sequential media—where creative assets appear in a specified order within a program—as a strategy that agents could manage but that is not readily handled programmatically.
These examples point to a role for agentic systems that is not simply a faster version of existing programmatic buying. They could help coordinate inventory and campaign requirements that involve publisher-specific formats or sequencing rules. Whether that promise translates into broad adoption will depend in part on publishers’ willingness to delegate individual tasks and on the ability of systems to work together.
CTV remains the priority
Hirsch said Swivel’s focus is currently entirely on CTV. The company intends to expand into retail media, which he described as promising because of the growing overlap between retail media and CTV. He cited Walmart, Vizio and Vibe.co in connection with that convergence.
For now, Swivel’s plans center on building a set of tools for CTV campaign workflows, while letting sellers select the functions they are prepared to automate. The company’s progress will depend not only on the capabilities of its agents, but also on whether publishers and other market participants can adopt them without adding complexity to an already fragmented supply chain.
