Agentio

Agentio is at the forefront of reimagining the creator economy. It transforms the way that brands buy sponsorships in creator content. The advertising industry has struggled for a long time to connect brands with the right creators using a manual, antiquated process, fragmented tools, and impostor marketing. As creator-driven marketing matures, brands are exploring systematic, automated and data-driven procedures to work with creators, specifically those reaching younger, more digital-first audiences.

Agentio, led by CEO Arthur Leopold, former president of Cameo, and CTO Jonathan Meyers, a Spotify veteran, is leading this charge with an automated creator advertising marketplace that allows brands to buy advertising inventory directly in creator content. With an end-to-end platform, brands can discover, check brand safety, measure performance - all within the content creator ecosystem, the process of sponsoring creators has never been easier. Agentio has a sophisticated system that uses AI to match the right brand with the most applicable YouTube creators, which means social advertising campaigns and influencer activations can be scaled efficiently, but still with a lower risk of losing that authenticity that creators inject into their work. Their goal is simple to modernize the way sponsors run sponsorships, faster, safer, and more measurable, than anyone has ever seen.

Once brands are on-boarded, Agentio allows them to search across a curated list of more than a thousand creators; evaluate content fit by way of automated brand-safety checks; and purchase ad reads or integrations in a couple of clicks. For creators, the firm gives them another way to monetize their content, allowing them to focus on making videos instead of managing the logistics of a sponsorship. Agentio also maintains an invite-only marketplace to ensure partnerships are of a high-quality and alleviate concerns of brand safety. Its campaign analytics follow impressions, conversions and engagement rates, providing reports that give advertisers transparency on campaign performance. Its data-driven approach has contributed to many growth-stage companies, scaling their influencer campaigns to meet target audience KPIs. Many advertisers have gravitated towards Agentio due to its automation and transparency, as it has taken what used to be a manual and unpredictable process, and crafting it in a way that resembles programmatic advertising—but for creator content.

Agentio had a terrific run in 2024, gaining over 50 brands and multiplying thousands of sponsorship deals within their platform. The company’s revenue model is primarily generated via a marketplace transaction fee by charging brands ~20% of total ad spend for sponsorships and integrations made via the firm either once or select. The company typically does not charge creators any fees on the platform, ensuring creators keep most of the revenue made on Agentio, this builds credibility with the top creators and gives them an attractive option, while the firm can maintain predictable revenue to run a sustainable business. The invite-only model also allows the company to find a sweet spot for performance versus brand safety, enabling the organisation to be one step or two ahead of brands, and provide the customer model against performance and brand safety.The direct to creator fee based nature of the platform also makes it suitable for managing brand safety while providing the benefits of transparency for both the brands and creator community. Towards the end of 2024, advertiser spending grew by over 2.3x quarter-over-quarter. Since its inception, Agentio has raised $16.25 million overall from its investors. Of that, $4.25 million was raised in succession from Angel investors during its first seed round led by Craft Ventures and AlleyCorp at the seed stage in 2023, while its Series A round in late 2024 led by Benchmark included another $12 million somewhere along with some general fund investments. The consistency in revenue generated from its seed round has accumulated into the company's funding and valuation proposition with listings of the company in the tens of millions according to the revenue multiples in addition to how many investors came onboard. The number of employees and headcount has grown respectively as during its beginning Agentio was working with six people exclusively, and by the time it made its Series A call had the right to the constraints at thirteen employees and was quickly hiring to establish its engineering, product, and go to market efforts.

Besides broadening its brand and creator network, Agentio has clients including DoorDash, Mint Mobile, MasterClass, Notion, and HelloFresh, etc. as well as creators including Nick DiGiovanni, Matty Matheson, Rhett, Link, and Chad Chad, etc. Agentio is located in Williamsburg, Brooklyn and focuses on Youtube at the moment, but has plans to enter markets on creator platforms like TikTok and Instagram shortly.

While there are competitors to Agentio, such as Aspire, FameBit by YouTube, and Grapevine, the firm is different because of its emphasis on automation, brand safety, and performance metrics. The platform is designed to feel as easy as running a programmatic ad campaign - a huge boon for data-driven growth marketers. The company automates manual functions like negotiations, contracts, and post-campaign reports, saving businesses and creators time and money. Agentio has a competitive advantage in the market, and its profitable model and rapidly increasing client expenditure suggests it will be one of the leading companies building the creator economy moving forward.

Arthur Leopold has indicated the company’s vision is that creator advertising will become the primary way for brands to reach younger generations, while Agentio will act as the infrastructure to support that makeover in marketing. The firm’s significant funding and growing list of brands and creators shows they are committed to automation and data transparency. Agentio has the potential to change the all-too-human way sponsorships are executed, to make them quicker, safer, and more quantifiable and become the new standard in the creator economy.

Click here to access Agentio's website.