Swivel is putting AI agents to work for publishers, automating the messy middle of ad ops so teams can focus on strategy. From faster troubleshooting to smarter workflows, here’s how they’re reshaping the sell-side playbook.
Ask any ad ops lead what keeps them up at night, and you’re sure to get a greatest-hits list.
Creative swaps that land at 10 PM? Check. Floor prices that don’t match reality? Check. Campaign setups requiring five tab flips like it’s a game of whack-a-mole? Check.
And don’t forget the biggest one. The campaigns that launch across multiple ad servers with specs just different enough to make you scramble for yield tweaks—all before the revenue takes a hit.
Ad Ops That Never Sleeps
Now, agentic ad ops promises to take ad operations pros out of their spreadsheets to focus on strategy and planning.
Swivel, founded by SpringServe co-founders Joe Hirsch, Matt Dearborn, and Rich Lin, aims to make ad ops more efficient and impact-driven.
The AI-driven orchestration layer—built to work across ad servers, SSPs, and DSPs—automates those time-sucking, error-prone tasks. It’s happening right now in publishers’ ad tech stacks, according to Frans Vermeulen, Swivel’s president.
“We see 40,000 to 50,000 daily automated actions per client, compared to maybe 100 to 200 from humans,” Vermeulen said. “We’re not trying to replace the people who know the business. We’re building tools that make them faster, sharper, and more valuable.”
From PilotDesk to Swivel: More Than a Name Change
Founded in 2024, the company started life as PilotDesk after the founders got tired of watching ops pros spend more time fighting systems than optimizing yield. So they began a quest, laser-focused on automating trafficking.
Vermeulen joined later that year, bringing experience from FreeWheel, Tru Optik, and advisory roles. Under his watch, PilotDesk raised $3M in seed funding. And later, $5.8M in Series A, with LG Ad Solutions and Telly among early clients.
By early 2025, their mission expanded, and the name PilotDesk no longer fit. “We were automating way more than the desk,” Vermeulen said. “It wasn’t about a single operator—it was about coordinating an entire operation.”
PilotDesk (now Swivel) is part of a growing wave of companies—Olyzon, Celtra, Placements.io, WideOrbit, and Innovid—automating the most tedious, manual parts of ad trafficking with AI-driven workflows.
This space is evolving quickly as ad ops teams turn to automation to unlock new efficiencies at scale.
But while some platforms require custom development or heavy IT resources, Swivel prides itself on being a no-code solution—designed so any ad ops team can orchestrate complex tasks and integrations right out of the box.
Rebranding to Swivel spotlights the shift from manual, multi-system workflow to proactive, always-on orchestration across trafficking, yield, and analytics, according to Vermeulen.
Automation in Three Acts
According to Vermeulen, Swivel automates high-friction jobs by shadowing how ops teams work. First, the platform tackles repetitive steps and then shifts them into an always-on cadence, expanding into optimizations no human could manage at scale.
Swivel’s orchestration runs through three core automation tracks:
- Trafficking – Pulls a new creative from a client folder, swaps it in, adjusts targeting, and pushes it live—all without a trafficker touching every step. Vermeulen highlighted Swivel’s ability to help ad ops reduce manual errors by seamlessly connecting disparate workflows and systems.
- Yield & Revenue Optimization – Real-time floor price tuning and bid density/QPS adjustments before waste creeps in, with pacing optimized to hit goals without any Friday panic. The goal: improved performance due to adjustments to in-flight campaigns.
- Analytics & Insights – Spots anomalies as they emerge, diagnoses delivery issues, and recommends fixes before the client ever notices.
The rollout happens in phases:
- Swivel shadows the way ops teams already work, mimicking human workflows step-by-step so there’s no mystery about what’s happening behind the scenes.
- Next, you shift those tasks into a 24/7 cadence to handle campaign changes, yield adjustments, and anomaly checks while your team is offline.
- The platform takes on optimizations no human could manage at scale, like tuning price floors across dozens of partners in real time or spotting subtle delivery trends before they turn into revenue leaks.
Every agent runs on clear, rules-based logic, with no hidden algorithms. Something that matters for compliance-focused organizations.
How Automation Turns Hours into High-Value Strategy
Once busywork is offloaded, teams redirect energy from troubleshooting toward higher-value work that drives revenue and partnerships.
Here’s how Swivel has already made an impact:
LG Ad Solutions — Swivel has executed over 6 million automated actions, freeing an estimated 25,000 hours of staff time. That time was reinvested into building new products, refining packages, and chasing bigger deals.
“Partnering with [Swivel] allowed us to curate our ad breaks and optimize in ways we hadn’t before. We could focus on strategic initiatives instead of manual work, maximizing our ad inventory’s potential and impact for clients,” Kelly McMahon, SVP, Global Operations, LG Ad Solutions, said.
Telly — More than 170,000 tasks have been automated across 30+ demand partners. Ops teams that once spent hours on setup and troubleshooting are now focused on audience strategy and revenue growth.
“Swivel’s automation capabilities have helped us accelerate workflows and optimize performance as we scale,” Ben Elliott, Lead, Ad Operations at Telly, said. “By leveraging AI and automation, we’re able to focus on what matters most—helping our advertising partners unlock the full creative and performance potential of the smartest TV platform ever built.”
Automating trafficking, yield, and analytics lifts revenue 15-20%—without adding headcount.
That’s the upside when ops teams redirect time from manual upkeep to high-value strategy. “The best results happen when humans set the strategy and AI runs the plays,” Vermeulen said.
Why This Isn’t Just Another Automation Pitch
A lot of automation for ad ops sounds good on paper, but every stack is a patchwork—one platform update can undo it all, according to Vermeulen. No matter how many tools promise relief, teams stay tied to manual processes.
Swivel says it changes the equation by plugging into the tech you already run—from multiple ad servers to niche SSPs to homegrown reporting dashboards—without a rip-and-replace. Teams can start freeing hours and reinvesting into higher-value work like campaign strategy, yield experiments, and revenue plays that move the needle.
From Quick Wins to Full-Stack Transformation
Next, Swivel aims for complex compliance workflows and advanced ML-driven recommendations—with human oversight. Getting there means scaling beyond early adopters to a broader base of publishers and agencies. But never without human oversight.
“AI can do a lot, but the human sets the guardrails,” Vermeulen said. “That’s how you get both trust and results.”