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Thursday, June 26th, 2025 – 1:02 pm
The complex landscape of digital advertising demands publishers to meticulously manage campaigns across a multitude of ad servers to achieve peak revenue generation. This often translates into a resource-intensive, manual process for ad operations teams. Addressing this persistent challenge, Swivel, a burgeoning pub tech SaaS startup, is leveraging artificial intelligence to introduce a sophisticated yield optimization tool. The company’s unique advantage lies in its foundational expertise: its core team comprises individuals who were instrumental in building ad servers themselves, providing an intimate understanding of the infrastructure they aim to enhance.
Formerly known as PilotDesk, the company rebranded to Swivel in May, signaling a new phase of its mission. The genesis of Swivel can be traced back to the collaborative synergy between Joseph Hirsch, Matt Dearborn, and Rich Lin – the co-founders of SpringServe – and Frans Vermeulen, a seasoned programmatic startup advisor with a significant tenure at FreeWheel. This alliance solidified when Vermeulen joined SpringServe as an advisor in 2020. This period was marked by significant shifts in the ad tech ecosystem: FreeWheel had been acquired by Comcast in 2014, and more recently, SpringServe itself was acquired by Magnite in 2021 for $31 million, a move that underscored the escalating value of Connected TV (CTV) advertising dollars.
The founders’ shared vision for an AI-driven yield optimization technology was born from their "in the weeds" experience with the intricacies of ad server operations. Frans Vermeulen shared with AdExchanger that prior to Swivel’s official launch, the team had extensively discussed the potential of such a solution, drawing upon their deep, hands-on understanding of the challenges faced by publishers. However, a critical factor in the timing of Swivel’s inception was the post-acquisition agreement for the SpringServe founders. As part of the deal with Magnite, Hirsch, Dearborn, and Lin were contractually obligated to remain with Magnite for approximately two years following the acquisition. Once this commitment concluded, the four principals swiftly reconvened to channel their expertise into their new venture, Swivel, which officially commenced operations last year.
Automating the Intricacies of Ad Operations
Swivel’s core value proposition is to automate the hundreds of micro-adjustments that publisher ad operations teams execute daily across diverse ad servers. These adjustments, ranging from real-time price floor modifications to the dynamic management of queries per second sent to Supply-Side Platforms (SSPs) and Demand-Side Platforms (DSPs), are crucial for maximizing ad revenue yield, optimizing campaign performance, and ultimately, enhancing the on-site user experience.
To illustrate the scale of the problem Swivel aims to solve, Vermeulen posited a scenario involving a publisher with a 10-person ad ops team. "There’s 1,000 things that I could optimize today, but my team only has the time to do 100 of them," he explained. Consequently, publishers naturally prioritize the 100 optimizations that yield the most significant revenue. This, however, leaves a substantial backlog of 900 potential optimizations – perhaps for smaller campaigns or less critical segments – that remain unaddressed due to resource constraints. Swivel’s ambition extends beyond simply automating these individual processes; it seeks to orchestrate a publisher’s optimization efforts across their entire spectrum of ad servers.
"Our customers use three to seven, on average, different ad platforms for different use cases," Vermeulen noted. This often means employing separate platforms for display, CTV, and audio advertising, each potentially utilizing a distinct ad server. While these platforms may possess some degree of interoperability, their data streams and operational frameworks are frequently disparate, hindering cohesive optimization. Swivel’s technology acts as a translator, harmonizing these diverse data sets across multiple servers. This unification enables more intelligent and effective cross-platform adjustments. Currently, the AI generates suggestions, empowering human operators to make the final implementation decisions, thus maintaining a crucial layer of oversight.
The strategic positioning of Swivel, coupled with the seasoned leadership of its founders, has evidently resonated with the ad tech investment community. To date, the company has secured $8.8 million in funding. This includes a $5.8 million Series A round and $3 million in seed funding. The investor base comprises prominent venture capital firms such as Tribeca Venture Partners, Ardent Venture Partners, Aperiam Ventures, Roster Capital, and Motley Fool Ventures. Notably, Mike Shehan and Steve Swoboda, co-founders of the influential SSP SpotX, are also among Swivel’s seed investors, underscoring the company’s credibility within the industry.
Swivel’s revenue model is primarily based on subscription software. The company currently boasts a roster of eight publicly traded publishing companies as clients, totaling 15 publishers. While a comprehensive list of its media partners remains under wraps, LG Ads has been publicly disclosed as one of Swivel’s key collaborators.
Strategic Growth and Future Trajectory
Initially focusing on the CTV and streaming publisher segments, Swivel anticipates a significant expansion of its target market by next year. Vermeulen indicated that traditional print and web publishers, along with emerging sectors like retail media, digital audio, and out-of-home advertising, are all within the company’s strategic purview. This diversification reflects the pervasive need for efficient yield optimization across all facets of the digital advertising ecosystem.
The Swivel team currently comprises 20 employees, a figure Vermeulen expects to grow rapidly. The immediate hiring focus will be on bolstering product development capabilities and strengthening the go-to-market strategy, including sales initiatives. Furthermore, the company plans to extend its operational reach beyond its current US-centric focus, with expansion into the UK and European markets slated for next year. This internationalization is a critical step in capturing a broader share of the global digital advertising market.
When questioned about the possibility of Swivel developing its own ad server, Vermeulen firmly stated it was a "hard no." This stance might appear counterintuitive given the founders’ extensive experience in ad server development. However, Vermeulen elaborated on the 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."
Instead, Swivel perceives its greatest opportunity in automating and orchestrating the complex ad operations tasks that span across existing ad servers. This approach not only leverages their core expertise but also strategically positions Swivel to avoid direct competition with ad server providers who may themselves introduce AI-based optimization tools. Vermeulen even encourages such development, stating, "No one’s going to orchestrate across [platforms]." He believes Swivel is uniquely positioned to facilitate collaboration between competing ad servers, drawing on their foundational knowledge of their architectures: "because we built them." This collaborative orchestration is where Swivel sees its enduring competitive advantage, providing a unified layer of intelligence that transcends the limitations of individual ad server functionalities.
The implications of Swivel’s approach are significant for the broader publishing industry. By democratizing access to advanced yield optimization, Swivel empowers publishers of all sizes to compete more effectively in an increasingly complex and data-driven advertising landscape. The ability to automate manual tasks frees up valuable human resources, allowing ad ops teams to focus on higher-level strategic initiatives. Furthermore, the cross-platform orchestration capability addresses a critical pain point for publishers operating in fragmented ecosystems, enabling them to unlock greater revenue potential from their advertising inventory. As the digital advertising world continues its rapid evolution, Swivel’s focus on intelligent automation and cross-platform synergy positions it as a key player in shaping the future of publisher revenue management.
