Top 20 adtech and advertising startups to watch in 2024

Top adtech and advertising startups

Complete list of the most adtech and advertising startups that are worth knowing:

Infosum

Founded in 2020, Infosum merges best practices around data governance, infrastructure and commercial models to power transparent yet productive data alliances adhering to global compliance standards. Cryptographic controls, access permissions and audit logs maintain consumer trust while driving business value.

By pioneering a sustainable mediator model upholding both innovation and individuals in maturing data ecosystems, Infosum unlocks indispensable progress – one upholding corporate imperatives and consumer rights in symbiotic balance reflecting shared interests in trust and service. Early partners spanning CPG multinationals already prove the commercial and social promise.

Sourcepoint

Founded in 2015, Sourcepoint developed advanced consent, preference and rights management technology meeting accelerating regulations on data use transparency and control. Capabilities enable custom user choice flows, policy dashboards, subject rights processing and more enterprise-wide controls.

By streamlining privacy and preference orchestration, Sourcepoint aims to accelerate trust in consumer data ecosystems via ethical data commercialization. Their specialized software makes complex oversight accessible for companies balancing innovation velocity with rising user expectations on visibility.

Nickelytics

Founded in 2020, Nickelytics geo-fences advertising buys to priority zip codes and times of day based on population demographics and campaign goals. Advertisers identify contexts like sporting events or festivals to align vehicle proximity with relevant audiences for their brand and product.

By merging flexible digital signage with on-demand vehicles, Nickelytics helps unlocks valuable impressions from transit backgrounds that concentrate valuable customer segments. The platform promises to enhance exposure efficiency and measurement at scale as urban audiences get harder to pin down.

Kevel

Founded in 2021, Kevel offers modular ad serving capabilities like direct sales, programmatic mediation, and advertiser portals to contextualize monetization to unique product visions. Frameworks cover video, audio, native, and banner units for omnichannel monetization control and analytics.

By abstracting the complexity behind ad operations and infrastructure, Kevel allows any digital service to tap into advertising upside without large development costs or outsourcing revenue. Their API-based toolkit promises to drive superior yield and experience control as even more experiences seek frictionless monetization.

Cavai

Founded in 2016, Cavai enables marketers and publishers to engage consumers through personalized dialogues within ads that feel natural by leveraging automated natural language and voice recognition. Conversational formats drive substantially higher engagement over static ads while enabling dynamic recommendations and nuanced user response capturing.

By pioneering conversational advertising grounded in practical use cases, Cavai unlocks indispensable returns on ad investment as experiences compete for drowned out attention amid device explosion. Their platform promises to enhance the relevance and recall exponentially while surfacing insights unreachable via legacy creatives set by default to be ignored or avoided.

Creatopy

Founded in 2020, Creatopy wants to make ad creation easy for small businesses and startups. Their online software has templates and branding tools to DIY professional ads quickly. Users can personalize designs for different formats like Facebook/Google display ads, Instagram stories, email headers, etc.

The platform also manages campaign workflow – enabling collaboration between team members. Features like budget allocation, approvals, revision history streamline project management.

Scalarr

Founded in 2018, Scalarr uses AI to optimize mobile advertising. Their scripts catch invalid traffic from bots, click farms, and other fraud. This saves advertisers money wasted on fake engagement.

Scalarr’s products give real-time visibility into campaign metrics, catching bad actors. Their AI also recommends ways to boost real ROI. Features like auto-blocking fraudulent traffic improve results.

Vidsy

Founded in 2018, Vidsy aims to make high-quality custom video ads more accessible for brands. Their suite assists with conceptualizing, scripting, editing footage, animating graphics and more. Vidsy’s tools simplify video creation without the typical costs.

For example, their Stock Camera feature films custom b-roll video on-demand, available to insert in ads. Design libraries offer brands on-trend editable templates to personalize with their messaging and imagery. Or brands can start from scratch.

Cosmose

Founded in 2015, Cosmose builds detailed shopper profiles by aggregating and studying billions of location data points. Retailers access insights on traffic flows, visitor demographics, peak store hours and more.

Cosmose overlays this analytics onto ad platform data to quantify campaign-driven store visits. For example, the metrics can trace what percentage of in-store shoppers saw a brand’s digital ads. Their analytics also inform local ad targeting.

StackAdapt

Founded in 2013, StackAdapt automates the purchasing of digital ad placements across a wide network. Advertisers access their inventory of native ad units on premium publishers. Buyers also utilize StackAdapt’s analytics to optimize ongoing campaigns.

The self-serve dashboard allows custom reporting on metrics like clicks, conversions and audience engagement. Performance data informs real-time bid adjustments to improve results. Customizable APIs also enable programmatic buying automation based on budgets and goals.

Titan Digital

Founded in 2019, Titan Digital aims to offer full-scope online marketing solutions for modern brands. Their team handles technical tasks like search ranking optimization, Adwords campaign creation and management, social content production and strategy, as well as designing sites and landing pages.

Titan Digital helps brands establish, refine and promote their digital presence. Small shops can benefit from their technical expertise and added workforce to punch above their weight online. Large brands can engage Titan’s specialists for tailored support scaling initiatives across channels.

ID5

Founded in 2022, ID5 develops alternative user identity tools for the post-cookie era. As brands phase out third party cookies, publishers lose granular data for ad targeting and pricing. ID5’s identifier solution preserves context for relevance without using cookies.

Their privacy-first approach relies on encrypted first-party data insights that are combined on the buy and sell side. Machine learning derives insights to inform targeting without sharing raw data. Publishers keep addressability; buyers reach the right audiences.

Permutive

Founded in 2016, Permutive develops technology to help publishers and advertisers transition to a post-cookie landscape. Their data clean rooms and management tools empower brands to take control of data collection and usage.

Permutive lets publishers gather more owned user data then activate it for targeting, analytics or operations. Buyers can use publisher first-party data to inform campaigns. Advanced controls remove middle players, preventing abuse.

Semasio

Founded in 2020, Semasio develops natural language processing for ad targeting. Instead of fitting predefined user or content taxonomies, their AI derives contextual signals from language. Words define association rather than top-down groupings.

Unified Targeting can determine audience interest and content relevance based on detected named entities and concepts. This semantic analysis at scale enables precise context-based targeting without buckets.

CreatorIQ

Founded in 2014, CreatorIQ taps into the rise of social media creators and their sway with followers. The platform uses data to surface relevant influencers based on audience demographics, interests and campaign needs. Tools also handle outreach, collaboration, approvals and payments.

Post-campaign, CreatorIQ provides in-depth reporting on key metrics like impressions, engagement rate and conversions. Their analytics shine light on campaign performance and optimize future efforts.

Dataseat

Founded in 2018, Dataseat consolidates mobile ad inventory buying and optimization. App marketers access various ad formats across top publishers. Dataseat’s platform handles targeted buying aided by campaign performance analytics.

Their intuitive UI allows custom reporting on key metrics like installs, registrations and in-app actions. These insights inform ongoing bid adjustments and budget allocations to improve results.

Enigma

Founded in 2012, Enigma creates better data frameworks to fuel transaction systems. They structure dispersed company attributes – from supply chain details to cybersecurity risks – into integrated profiles. Enigma data and models reveal a more complete picture of vendors, investors, and partners.

Their Compass solution enriches supplier profiles with risk metrics and behavioral traits for smarter decisions in hiring, lending, or procurement. Associated API access and analytics guide businesses to optimize relationships, pricing, approvals and more.

Yieldmo

Founded in 2013, Yieldmo built a major marketplace for attention-getting mobile ads. Their platform offers premium display space coupled with performance insights and attribution. Sophisticated modeling helps brands identify and engage the most valuable audiences.

Yieldmo provides the targeting, automation, and measurement to power campaigns with confidence. Features allow custom audience building, creative testing, and ROAS projections in one platform. Their self-serve model makes display advertising easier.

Gimbal

Founded in 2019, Gimbal built tools to structure location and other observational data from the field. Teams can automatically direct inputs to relevant departments for processing. Workflows connect Internet of Things (IoT) data with critical operations.

By seamlessly incorporating physical inputs with business systems, Gimbal enables data-driven action. Their automation eliminates manual analysis while dispatching important alerts. Clients can spot trends, send notifications, and drive efficiencies.

Brandie

Founded in 2019, Brandie built a marketplace connecting brands with everyday social media personalities. After profile vetting, approved micro-influencers share marketing campaigns with their networks. In exchange they earn points to redeem rewards from brand partners.

By incentivizing word-of-mouth promotion, Brandie taps genuine recommendations at scale. Their qualified members advocate for brands they love to build loyalty. A triple win model benefits partners, influencers and followers alike.

Conclusion

No longer are adtech startups focused solely on driving profits – many also aim to shape the ethical standards and environment of online advertising moving forward. From artificial intelligence and machine learning to drive more relevant and effective ad targeting, to blockchain technologies that add transparency, the innovations emerging in the space aim to solve persistent problems in the industry.