Top 10 AdTech Startups In 2026: Revolutionizing Digital Advertising
The advertising technology landscape is experiencing a profound transformation as we enter 2026. With the global AdTech market projected to exceed $1.22 trillion by 2033 and privacy regulations reshaping how companies collect and use consumer data, innovative startups are emerging to address these challenges head-on. The convergence of artificial intelligence, privacy-first solutions, and new advertising channels like Connected TV and retail media networks is creating unprecedented opportunities for companies that can navigate this complex ecosystem.
Despite a challenging funding environment in recent years, with 2024 seeing AdTech investment hit decade lows, the industry has shown remarkable resilience. By 2025, funding rebounded with a notable increase, and the smartest startups are leveraging AI, first-party data strategies, and creator economies to capture market share. This article explores ten exceptional AdTech startups that are defining the future of digital advertising through technological innovation, strategic positioning, and solutions that balance performance with privacy compliance.
1. Agentio: The AI-Native Creator Marketing Platform
Leading our list is Agentio, which has emerged as the definitive platform for creator-led advertising at enterprise scale. The company recently raised $40 million in Series B funding led by Forerunner, bringing its total capital to $56 million and achieving a valuation of $340 million. Named to Forbes’ Next Billion Dollar Startups list for 2025, Agentio represents a fundamental shift in how brands approach influencer marketing.
The platform addresses a critical pain point in digital advertising: creator marketing has historically been manual, inefficient, and impossible to scale beyond a handful of partnerships. While brands recognize that creator advertising will reach $500 billion by 2027 as creators become the most trusted voices for consumers, the infrastructure hasn’t kept pace. Agentio’s AI infrastructure automates end-to-end creator campaign lifecycles, from creator-brand matching to content briefing, brand safety monitoring, bidding, contracting, approvals, payments, and real-time performance tracking.
What sets Agentio apart is its ability to make creator marketing programmatic. In 2025 alone, over one hundred leading enterprise brands including Uber, DoorDash, CashApp, and Olipop shifted tens of millions of dollars in paid media budgets to creator campaigns built on Agentio’s platform. The results speak for themselves: Bombas achieved 5.3 times better return on ad spend from Agentio campaigns compared to traditional digital video campaigns. The platform enables brands to build and scale creator programs with the same efficiency, speed, measurement, and control as any digital media buy, while giving creators automated access to enterprise advertising budgets.
2. StackAdapt: AI-Powered Programmatic Excellence
StackAdapt has established itself as one of the most sophisticated programmatic advertising platforms, combining machine learning optimization with comprehensive multi-channel capabilities. The Canadian company raised an impressive $235 million from Teachers’ Pension Fund in early 2025, underscoring investor confidence in its technology-driven approach to digital advertising.
The platform excels at delivering conversion-focused outcomes rather than vanity metrics like viewability or reach. StackAdapt’s proprietary AI engine provides real-time optimization across Connected TV, display, native, audio, and digital out-of-home advertising. The company was named “Overall Data Technology Solution of the Year” in the 6th Annual Data Breakthrough Awards, reflecting its commitment to bridging AdTech and MarTech with innovative data solutions.
What distinguishes StackAdapt is its focus on solving what industry leaders call the “growth paradox” – the disconnect where technology promised more connection and effectiveness but often creates more fatigue, silos, and complexity. The platform addresses this through intelligent automation that handles repetitive tasks while giving marketers more time for strategy and creativity. Clients report a 77 percent reduction in cost per click driven by StackAdapt’s data insights and quick audience implementation capabilities. The platform’s emphasis on first-party data activation, with industry-leading match rates, positions it perfectly for the privacy-first advertising landscape of 2026.
3. tvScientific: Performance-Driven Connected TV Advertising
Connected TV represents one of the fastest-growing segments in digital advertising, and tvScientific is pioneering the performance marketing approach to CTV. The company raised $25.5 million in Series B funding in 2025 and has positioned itself as the leader in outcome-based television advertising that delivers measurable business results.
Traditional TV advertising has long been plagued by limited attribution and unclear ROI. tvScientific changes this paradigm by enabling advertisers to run CTV campaigns optimized for specific performance metrics like website visits, app downloads, purchases, and other conversion events. The platform provides unprecedented data to measure phone leads, conversions, and the true return on investment of CTV campaigns, allowing marketers to optimize campaigns in-flight based on what’s actually driving business results.
The company’s vision extends beyond current capabilities. As outlined in their industry analysis, they foresee a future of fully agentic advertising where AI agents autonomously adjust placements across performance CTV, social, and mobile to maximize ROI without human intervention. With TV and video ad spending expected to exceed $124 billion in 2025, accounting for over twenty percent of total media spend, tvScientific is perfectly positioned to capture significant market share as advertisers demand accountability from their television investments.
4. Kevel: Building the Retail Media Infrastructure
Kevel has emerged as the leading infrastructure provider for retail media networks, offering what they call “The Retail Media Cloud” – a comprehensive platform that enables retailers, marketplaces, and publishers to build custom advertising businesses. As retail media explodes toward a projected $136 billion globally, Kevel provides the technology backbone that allows companies to compete with Amazon and Walmart without surrendering control to third-party platforms.
The company launched Kevel Console in June 2025, an AI-powered self-service platform that combines intelligent automation with unprecedented flexibility. The platform features predictive decisioning for multi-channel audience targeting, AI budget management that optimizes spend in real-time, an AI-powered creative builder, and workflow automation that streamlines booking, management, and reporting. These capabilities address a critical industry need as retail media is projected to see twenty-five percent of dollars shift to offsite channels like search, social, and display by 2027.
Kevel’s success comes from its API-first approach that gives clients complete control and customization. Major brands like PayPal Ads and Dollar General leverage Kevel’s infrastructure to build differentiated retail media networks that reflect their unique value propositions. The company’s CEO James Avery advocates passionately for industry standardization through the IAB’s retail media standards, believing that standardization will benefit the entire ecosystem. As retailers increasingly compete for advertiser budgets, Kevel’s technology helps them deliver the sophisticated targeting, measurement, and campaign management capabilities that advertisers demand.
5. Permutive: Privacy-First Audience Activation
As third-party cookies continue their phase-out and privacy regulations tighten globally, Permutive has positioned itself at the forefront of privacy-compliant audience activation. The London-based startup helps publishers monetize their first-party data without compromising user privacy, using edge computing technology to process data in real-time while keeping it secure.
Permutive’s approach is built on a fundamental philosophy that CEO Joe Root describes as “the destruction of identity in the AdTech ecosystem.” Rather than tracking individuals across the web, Permutive helps publishers use behavioral insights from their authenticated users to make predictions about anonymous visitors. From a single pageview, the platform collects twenty to thirty data points about visitor behavior and uses this to project interests and preferences without requiring personal identification.
The company’s edge computing infrastructure processes data locally on users’ devices, which is crucial for publishers who may only have seconds to show a visitor an ad. This technological advantage, combined with full GDPR compliance, makes Permutive increasingly attractive as privacy regulations expand. The startup raised $18.5 million in Series B funding and has become the category leader in the United Kingdom, consistently beating billion-dollar global competitors. As the industry moves away from identity-based targeting, Permutive’s cohort-based approach represents the future of programmatic advertising in a privacy-conscious world.
6. Smartly: Unified Creative and Campaign Automation
Smartly has built one of the most comprehensive AI-powered advertising platforms, unifying media buying, creative production, and intelligence across both the open web and walled garden platforms. The company serves over seven hundred brands and advertisers, helping them solve the dual challenges of advertising campaign complexity and creative production at scale.
The platform’s unified approach combines media, creative, and intelligence into end-to-end workflows powered by AI. Rather than forcing marketers to use separate tools for campaign management, creative production, and performance analysis, Smartly integrates these functions seamlessly. The company recently launched comprehensive integrations with Reddit for automated campaign management, demonstrating its commitment to expanding into emerging advertising channels.
What makes Smartly particularly valuable is its focus on dynamic and personalized creative. The platform has proven that customized creative significantly improves advertising impact, helping brands move beyond one-size-fits-all approaches. In 2025, Smartly launched enhanced AI capabilities including generative AI features for creative production, allowing marketers to rapidly test variations and optimize performance. As creative becomes increasingly important in a crowded digital landscape, Smartly’s combination of automation and intelligence helps brands maintain quality while achieving scale.
7. Prescient AI: Media Measurement and Attribution Reinvented
Prescient AI is transforming how ecommerce brands measure and optimize their advertising spend through proprietary machine learning models that provide unprecedented accuracy and actionable insights. The platform addresses fundamental problems with traditional media attribution and marketing mix modeling that have plagued advertisers for years.
Unlike legacy attribution systems affected by data privacy restrictions or changes in business environment, Prescient AI measures media halo effects to determine how campaigns indirectly impact sales across the entire customer journey. The platform provides daily updates and campaign-level recommendations to improve return on ad spend and lower customer acquisition costs, connecting to major channels like Shopify, Amazon, Meta, Google, Snap, TikTok, and CTV in minutes.
The company’s innovation lies in its ability to predict profitability and maximize revenue generated by advertising campaigns across omnichannel commerce. As digital advertising becomes more complex with multiple touchpoints influencing purchase decisions, brands desperately need measurement solutions that accurately attribute results. Prescient AI’s machine learning approach provides the clarity that allows marketers to optimize budgets confidently, shifting spend to channels and tactics that truly drive business outcomes rather than relying on last-click attribution or outdated modeling approaches.
8. ID5: Privacy-Compliant Identity Resolution
As the advertising industry grapples with the deprecation of third-party cookies and mobile advertising identifiers, ID5 has created an independent identity infrastructure that enables effective targeting while respecting user privacy. The company provides privacy-first user recognition and measurement capabilities that help publishers and AdTech platforms operate efficiently across all digital advertising environments.
ID5’s technology solves one of the industry’s most pressing challenges: how to identify and reach audiences without relying on invasive tracking mechanisms. The platform improves match rates for publishers and increases programmatic revenue through better audience recognition, all while maintaining full compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations. This balance between performance and privacy compliance is exactly what advertisers need in 2026.
The company’s universal ID solution works across publishers, platforms, and devices, providing a consistent identifier that doesn’t rely on cookies or device IDs. This interoperability is crucial as advertisers increasingly need to run campaigns across multiple publishers and platforms. As more than half of web traffic is now untargetable via cookies, ID5’s alternative identification approach helps advertisers maintain reach and effectiveness. The startup represents the future of identity in advertising – one built on privacy principles rather than surveillance.
9. Criteo: Retail Media Innovation at Scale
While Criteo is more established than other companies on this list, its transformation into a retail media powerhouse warrants inclusion. The company works with over two hundred retailers to build retail media businesses, making it by far the largest independent retail media technology provider. Despite increased competition from upstarts, Criteo has maintained its position through continuous innovation and scale advantages.
In 2025, Criteo launched new video advertising capabilities that standardize video formats across retailers, addressing a major pain point for advertisers who previously had to customize creative for each retail media network. The company’s Commerce Media Platform connects shoppers with products throughout the buying journey across both physical and digital touchpoints, linking advertising investment directly to transactions.
Criteo’s strength lies in its extensive network effects and data assets. The company’s performance marketing and retargeting capabilities, originally built for the open internet, have been successfully adapted for retail media environments. While facing challenges from losses like Target’s Roundel and Uber Eats, Criteo continues to win significant retail media business through its proven technology, extensive advertiser relationships, and ability to deliver results at scale. As retail media consolidation continues in 2026, Criteo’s combination of technology, scale, and experience positions it as a key player.
10. Moloco: Machine Learning for Commerce and App Growth
Moloco has built a powerful machine learning platform that helps app developers and retailers acquire users and drive revenue through highly efficient advertising. The company specializes in operationalizing machine learning to solve growth challenges, with particular strength in app monetization and retail media applications.
The platform’s machine learning models excel at predicting which users are most likely to engage or convert, enabling precise targeting that maximizes return on ad spend. Moloco has emerged as a strong competitor in the retail media space, offering technology that rivals established players like Criteo. The company’s approach emphasizes automation and intelligence, allowing clients to achieve sophisticated optimization without requiring large teams of data scientists.
What distinguishes Moloco is its focus on making advanced machine learning accessible and practical. The platform continuously learns from campaign performance, automatically adjusting bidding strategies and audience targeting to improve results. For app developers, this means more efficient user acquisition with better lifetime value. For retailers building media networks, it means competitive ad technology without the need to build sophisticated ML infrastructure in-house. As AI becomes increasingly central to advertising effectiveness, Moloco’s specialized machine learning capabilities position it as an essential partner for growth-focused companies.
Conclusion: Navigating the AdTech Revolution
The AdTech startups profiled here represent the cutting edge of digital advertising innovation. From AI-native creator platforms to privacy-first identity solutions, from performance CTV to retail media infrastructure, these companies are solving the industry’s most pressing challenges while capturing significant market opportunities.
For advertisers, the message is clear: the tools and platforms you use will increasingly determine your competitive advantage. Companies that embrace AI-powered optimization, privacy-compliant targeting, and emerging channels like CTV and retail media will outperform those relying on legacy approaches. For publishers and retailers, building owned advertising businesses through platforms like Kevel or Criteo represents a major revenue opportunity that leverages first-party data assets.
As we move deeper into 2026, the AdTech startups highlighted in this article will continue driving innovation, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in digital advertising, and shaping how brands connect with consumers. The future belongs to companies that can balance performance with privacy, leverage AI intelligently, and navigate the increasing complexity of the modern advertising ecosystem. These ten startups are leading that charge.
