The advertising technology industry is entering a new phase as artificial intelligence changes how brands reach audiences, publishers monetize content, and marketers measure campaign performance. From AI-powered advertising inside conversations to automated audience discovery and creative measurement, a new generation of companies is developing tools designed to make digital advertising more relevant, efficient, and accountable.
A new Hackernoon feature highlights companies working across this evolving landscape. The selection spans several areas of advertising technology, including AI-driven monetization, retail media infrastructure, audience intelligence, creative optimization, and campaign measurement. While their approaches differ, the companies share a focus on solving specific challenges in how advertising is delivered, managed, and evaluated.
Rethinking Where and How Ads Appear
Some of the companies featured are exploring new advertising formats and monetization opportunities beyond traditional digital placements.
Velocity is building advertising and monetization infrastructure for AI applications. Its platform connects developers with advertisers by analyzing real-time user intent and conversation context, matching relevant advertisers, and generating tailored creative within the interaction. Founded by Tal Shoham, Nimrod Zuta, and Amir Shaked, the company announced a $27 million seed round in July 2026, led by NFX and Red Dot Capital Partners.
Rembrand is taking a different approach to advertising in video content. Its AI technology inserts branded products into existing footage after production, allowing brands to appear through virtual signage, branded screens, and product placements. Its VISTA system identifies suitable scenes, while AI Studio handles the placement process. In October 2026, Rembrand reported a collaboration with Omnicom Media to integrate planning and activation into the agency’s streaming-media buying workflow.
Anzu focuses on advertising within gaming environments, connecting developers with advertisers through placements designed to fit naturally into gameplay. In February 2026, the company introduced clickable advertising formats using interactions such as double-tapping and holding, which are designed to reduce accidental clicks. Its October expansion into non-gaming mobile applications further extended its reach beyond traditional gaming environments.
Building the Infrastructure Behind Advertising
Another group of companies is focused on the infrastructure that allows retailers, publishers, and marketplaces to operate advertising businesses and activate their audiences.
Topsort provides retailers and marketplaces with tools for running advertising operations, including auctions, ad serving, campaign management, and reporting. Its Tomi AI agent introduces conversational campaign management, allowing teams to discuss objectives, review performance, and receive recommendations for bids, budgets, and targeting. Importantly, significant campaign changes still require human approval.
Kevel similarly helps retailers and commerce businesses establish advertising networks using their own customer relationships and data. Its configurable infrastructure emphasizes transparency into AI-driven bidding, placement, and optimization decisions. In October 2026, Kevel announced $52 million in new capital, bringing its total funding above $100 million. The financing will support product development, AI capabilities, and international expansion.
Optable and Permutive are addressing the growing importance of audience data for publishers and advertisers. Optable provides identity management and data collaboration technology, including clean rooms that enable controlled data sharing. Its work with Goodway Group illustrates this approach: the agency built its Passport One intelligence layer on Optable’s infrastructure and used its audience agent for campaign planning.
Permutive connects publishers’ first-party audience information with advertiser data to support targeting and activation. Its partnership with TransUnion enables advertisers to activate TransUnion audiences across Permutive’s publisher network, creating a shared pathway between audience intelligence and campaign delivery.
Improving Targeting, Creative, and Measurement
Several other companies on Hackernoon’s list concentrate on helping marketers understand which audiences to reach, which creative assets perform, and whether advertising generates measurable business outcomes.
Dstillery develops audiences for programmatic advertising using first-party-data lookalikes, search-based lookalikes, and retail purchase-intent signals. Its DS-1 platform combines audience discovery, planning, and activation through a conversational interface, allowing users to identify existing segments or build new audiences from domains, keywords, and purchase intent.
CreativeX connects creative assets, media spending, and campaign outcomes. Its platform helps brands track spending against individual assets, evaluate creative standards, and identify opportunities for revisions or budget adjustments. Its integrations include Amazon, Google DV360, Meta, TikTok, and CreatorIQ.
Haus focuses on incrementality, helping advertisers understand the business outcomes actually caused by their marketing activities. By combining experimentation, marketing mix modeling, and attribution, its platform supports spending decisions across channels and individual advertisements. In September 2026, Haus introduced its Architect AI agent to Causal MMM to reduce manual analytical work.
GumGum approaches advertising through contextual intelligence, offering placements across connected TV, online video, and display. Its Mindset Graph combines signals involving content, creative, audiences, devices, and timing. A campaign for the BBC’s The Celebrity Traitors demonstrated how the company used changing contextual and attention signals to adjust targeting and creative throughout the campaign.
A More Measurable Advertising Landscape
The companies highlighted by Hackernoon illustrate how broad the AdTech opportunity has become. Rather than focusing exclusively on generating impressions or clicks, these startups are developing technologies around the decisions that determine advertising performance, from audience selection and creative placement to campaign optimization and measurement.
As AI becomes more integrated into advertising workflows, the ability to explain how technology makes decisions and demonstrate its contribution will remain important. For advertisers, publishers, and technology providers, the next phase of competition may depend not simply on reaching more people, but on making every advertising interaction more relevant and measurable.
