AI is reshaping the media and marketing industries at warp speed.
Adtech and martech startups are raising millions of dollars from venture capital firms on the back of the AI wave.
Many of these companies are developing under-the-hood tech, such as agentic AI tools designed to streamline marketers’ workflows and boost productivity. Others are working on creative platforms that let marketers create ads and even virtual influencers using generative AI. Some are working in new fields such as “generative engine optimization” (GEO), helping brands optimize their visibility in AI search results. One is helping brands advertise to AI agents.
“We want to disrupt the traditional ad agency,” Bolbi Liu, founder of AI adtech startup AdsGency, told Business Insider. In October, AdsGency announced it raised a $12 million seed round, led by XYZ Venture Capital.
Advertising agency giants are aware that they must embrace AI or risk being left behind. Large agency groups, from UK-based WPP to French holding company Publicis and US ad giant Omnicom, have pledged to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in AI over the next few years. Publicis is hunting for AI companies to acquire.
There’s big money to be made. A Boston Consulting Group survey of 200 senior marketers, conducted last year, found that 71% of chief marketing officers plan to invest at least $10 million annually in generative AI over the next three years, up from 57% of respondents in the 2024 edition of the study.
Business Insider has interviewed the founders of startups building tools to disrupt advertising and marketing with AI. These founders shared the pitch decks they used to impress investors and raise venture capital funding.
Read 17 pitch decks advertising and marketing AI startups used to raise millions:
Series B
Series A
Seed
- AdsGency, an agentic AI startup that automates advertising on platforms like Meta or Google: $12 million
- Limy, a platform to help brands boost their visibility to AI agents: $10 million
- Epiminds, an agentic AI tool aimed at helping performance marketing agencies: $6.6 million
- Nexad, an adtech startup building native ads for AI chat apps: $6 million
- Paramark, a startup using AI to track how ad campaigns drive sales: $6 million
- Octave, an agentic go-to-market platform that helps companies build customer profiles and decide their marketing strategies: $5.5 million
- Artificial Societies, a startup that helps create AI personas for product testing and brand propositions: $5.35 million
- Eikona, a lifecycle marketing startup training AI models to help companies retain their customers: $5 million
- Pomo, a startup that uses AI to help companies make marketing decisions faster: $4.5 million
- Uplane, a company that helps brands launch and test digital ads: $4.5 million
- Azoma, a generative engine optimization startup that simulates how brands appear in chatbot replies and creates content optimized for AI: $4 million “pre-Series A”
Pre-seed
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