Kevel vs Google

About

Kevel (formerly Adzerk) is an ad infrastructure company founded in 2010 by James Avery to provide API-first ad serving technology that allows digital platforms to build custom, first-party advertising networks rather than relying on third-party ad tech stacks like Google Ad Manager. The company was built on the thesis that publishers, marketplaces, and retail media operators needed programmatic-grade ad serving capabilities they could control, customize, and brand as their own — without the data leakage, opacity, and vendor lock-in associated with dominant ad tech platforms. Kevel's API architecture makes it uniquely suited for companies that need to embed advertising logic directly into their own product infrastructure.\n\nKevel's primary products include its core Ad Server APIs, which process 3 billion+ ad requests per day, and its Retail Media Cloud platform, which enables e-commerce companies and marketplaces to build sponsored product and display advertising businesses on top of their own shopper data. Customers include Edmunds for automotive listings ads, Klarna for commerce media, and Delivery Hero for restaurant and grocery sponsored placements — all examples of companies that needed ad serving infrastructure customized to non-standard inventory formats and audience contexts. The Retail Media Cloud positions Kevel at the center of the fastest-growing segment in digital advertising.\n\nKevel raised a $23 million Series C in March 2024, bringing total funding to approximately $42 million, to accelerate its retail media platform and expand its enterprise sales motion. The company has benefited significantly from the retail media wave — as Amazon's advertising business demonstrated the economics of first-party commerce data monetization, every major retailer and marketplace has sought to build comparable capabilities. Kevel's white-label approach allows these companies to move faster than building proprietary ad tech from scratch while maintaining full data ownership and control.