Kevel

Kevel provides infrastructure APIs that enable online retailers, publishers, and other platforms to build custom ad platforms, including sponsored listings, internal promotions, and native ads. Founded by CEO James Avery, the company describes its original positioning as "Twilio for ads," offering modular, API-first building blocks that companies can assemble into their own commerce media networks. Over time, Kevel has evolved from a purely developer-facing toolkit into a more pre-built, customizable infrastructure stack aimed at making sophisticated ad tech more approachable.

The platform covers ad serving and decisioning for promoted listings and native ads, audience management that converts loyalty and order data into targeting capabilities, self-serve brand interfaces, and off-site reach extension into platforms like Meta and Google using first-party retailer data. Kevel is exclusively supply-side focused, meaning its customers are always retailers, publishers, banks, travel companies, or other commerce platforms rather than brands or advertisers. The company positions itself as an alternative to relying on Amazon, Google, and Facebook for ad infrastructure.

Kevel serves customers including Ticketmaster, Yelp, Strava, Mozilla, and Klarna, who use its infrastructure to launch retail media and commerce media networks. The company also emphasizes emerging opportunities in offline attribution, connected TV, in-store screens, travel, and fintech verticals. Kevel has been operating for more than 16 years and has been involved in industry discussions, including testimony in a DOJ antitrust case related to ad tech.