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Thursday, June 26th, 2025 – 1:02 pm
Publisher ad operations teams are frequently tasked with the complex and often manual process of aggregating campaign data from a multitude of disparate ad servers. This intricate data wrangling is crucial for maximizing ad revenue yield, a challenge that the public technology SaaS startup Swivel aims to significantly streamline. The company is introducing an AI-driven yield optimization tool, conceived and developed by a team with direct, hands-on experience in building ad servers themselves.
Swivel, previously known as PilotDesk before its rebranding in May, is the innovative brainchild of Joseph Hirsch, Matt Dearborn, and Rich Lin, the co-founders of SpringServe, alongside Frans Vermeulen, a seasoned programmatic startup advisor and former executive at FreeWheel. The four individuals forged their professional connection when Vermeulen joined SpringServe as an advisor in 2020. This period coincided with significant shifts in the digital advertising landscape; FreeWheel had been acquired by Comcast in 2014, and SpringServe itself was on the cusp of acquisition by Magnite, which ultimately occurred in 2021.
Prior to the official launch of Swivel, the founding team engaged in extensive discussions regarding the potential for a yield optimization technology. Their vision was deeply informed by their collective "in the weeds" experience with the intricacies of ad server architecture and operation, as detailed by Vermeulen in a conversation with AdExchanger. However, the terms of the SpringServe acquisition by Magnite mandated that Hirsch, Dearborn, and Lin remain with Magnite for approximately two years post-transaction. Upon fulfilling this commitment and gaining their freedom to pursue new ventures, the quartet swiftly mobilized to establish their new startup, which officially commenced operations last year.
Automating Ad Operations: The Swivel Proposition
Swivel’s core value proposition lies in its ability to automate the hundreds of micro-adjustments that publisher ad operations teams execute daily across various ad servers. These critical, yet often repetitive, tasks include real-time price floor adjustments, the dynamic management of queries per second (QPS) directed at Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) and Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs), and other nuanced controls designed to optimize campaign performance, enhance user experience, and, most importantly, maximize ad revenue yield.
Frans Vermeulen illustrated the problem with a hypothetical scenario: "Consider a publisher with a 10-person ad ops team. There are 1,000 things that I could optimize today, but my team only has the time to do 100 of them. So, naturally, publishers will default to optimizing the 100 things that drive the most revenue. But, that leaves 900 things that I’d love to get to, but they’re smaller campaigns or less important for whatever reason." This highlights the significant untapped potential for revenue optimization that often goes unaddressed due to resource constraints.
Swivel’s ambition extends beyond merely automating these isolated processes. The company aims to orchestrate and optimize a publisher’s entire ad serving ecosystem. Vermeulen elaborated on the complexity publishers face: "Our customers use three to seven, on average, different ad platforms for different use cases." These platforms may be specialized for distinct ad formats or channels, such as display advertising, Connected TV (CTV), or audio ads, each often employing its own distinct ad server. While these platforms possess some degree of interoperability, their communication is frequently fragmented and inefficient.
Swivel’s technology acts as a crucial translator, bridging these disparate data sets across multiple servers. This enables more intelligent and holistic cross-platform optimization strategies. The AI engine within Swivel surfaces these optimization opportunities as actionable suggestions, empowering human operators to make informed decisions. The ultimate implementation of these adjustments remains under human control, ensuring oversight and strategic alignment.
Investment and Traction in a Competitive Landscape
The innovative approach of Swivel, coupled with the deep industry experience of its leadership team, has garnered significant attention from ad tech investors. To date, Swivel has successfully secured $8.8 million in funding, comprising a $5.8 million Series A round and an initial $3 million in seed funding.
The company’s investor base includes prominent venture capital firms such as Tribeca Venture Partners, Ardent Venture Partners, Aperiam Ventures, Roster Capital, and Motley Fool Ventures. Further bolstering Swivel’s credibility within the industry, Mike Shehan and Steve Swoboda, the co-founders of the successful SSP SpotX, are also among its seed investors. This array of financial backing underscores the market’s confidence in Swivel’s potential to disrupt the ad revenue optimization space.
Currently, Swivel’s revenue streams are primarily derived from its subscription-based software offerings. The company boasts a client roster that includes eight publicly traded publishing entities, with a total of 15 publishers on its platform. While confidentiality agreements limit public disclosure, LG Ads has been identified as a key media partner.
Growth Trajectory and Strategic Vision
Swivel initially focused its efforts on attracting CTV and streaming publishers, a segment of the market experiencing rapid growth and complex ad serving needs. However, Vermeulen anticipates a significant broadening of the company’s market focus by next year. Traditional print and web publishers, alongside emerging sectors like retail media networks, digital audio platforms, and out-of-home (OOH) advertising sellers, are all within Swivel’s strategic expansion plans.
The company currently employs a team of 20 individuals, a figure Vermeulen acknowledges is "growing quickly." The immediate hiring priorities are centered on bolstering product development capabilities and strengthening the go-to-market strategy, including sales and business development. A key strategic initiative for the upcoming year involves expanding Swivel’s operational footprint into the United Kingdom and wider European markets, complementing its current concentration on the U.S. domestic market.
When questioned about the possibility of Swivel developing its own ad server, Vermeulen provided a definitive and emphatic response: "That’s a hard no." This stance might appear paradoxical given the founders’ extensive experience in ad server development.
However, Vermeulen articulated the underlying strategic rationale: "We’re never going to build an ad server, because ad servers are already pretty good at what they do, and they’re already advancing in and of themselves." Swivel’s competitive advantage, therefore, lies not in competing with existing ad server technology, but in providing an indispensable layer of intelligence and automation that orchestrates these existing platforms. This approach also strategically insulates Swivel from the potential competitive threat of ad server vendors incorporating their own AI-based optimization tools, a development that Vermeulen, in fact, encourages.
"No one’s going to orchestrate across [platforms]," Vermeulen stated, highlighting the unique value proposition of a neutral, cross-platform optimization solution. He further emphasized Swivel’s unique position to foster interoperability between competing ad servers: "Plus, Swivel is best positioned to get competing ad servers to work together, because we built them." This insider knowledge and understanding of ad server architectures are invaluable assets that allow Swivel to bridge the technical divides and unlock new levels of efficiency and revenue for publishers.
The Evolving Ad Tech Ecosystem and Swivel’s Role
The digital advertising industry is in a constant state of flux, driven by technological advancements, evolving user behaviors, and increasing demands for transparency and efficiency. Publishers, in particular, face mounting pressure to extract maximum value from their ad inventory while simultaneously delivering a seamless user experience. The proliferation of ad servers and platforms, while offering specialized functionalities, has inadvertently created a fragmented ecosystem that complicates optimization efforts.
Swivel’s emergence addresses a critical pain point within this ecosystem. By leveraging artificial intelligence, the company aims to democratize sophisticated yield optimization techniques, making them accessible and actionable for a broader range of publishers. The AI’s ability to analyze vast datasets, identify complex patterns, and suggest data-driven adjustments can significantly augment the capabilities of human ad ops teams, allowing them to focus on higher-level strategic initiatives rather than tedious manual tasks.
The company’s strategic decision to focus on orchestration rather than direct ad server development is a shrewd one. It positions Swivel as a crucial enabler of existing infrastructure, fostering a collaborative environment rather than engaging in direct competition. This "picks and shovels" approach, providing essential tools for the gold rush of digital advertising, often proves more sustainable and scalable in the long run.
The success of Swivel’s model will depend on its ability to continue innovating its AI capabilities, ensuring its platform remains adaptable to the ever-changing landscape of ad serving technologies and programmatic protocols. Furthermore, its expansion into new verticals like retail media and OOH signals a recognition of the universal need for efficient ad revenue optimization across all digital advertising channels. As the industry grapples with issues of ad fraud, data privacy, and the increasing complexity of cross-platform advertising, tools like Swivel that promise enhanced control and improved yield are poised to play an increasingly vital role. The company’s trajectory, backed by substantial investment and a clear strategic vision, suggests it is well-positioned to become a significant player in shaping the future of publisher ad monetization.
