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NewsUSA Sells the One Thing Public Relations Usually Refuses to Promise
For nearly four decades, Rick Smith has sold brands a peculiar bargain: make the advertisement useful enough to resemble service journalism, then guarantee that publishers will run it. The bet survived a failed video expansion, the shrinking newspaper, and now the arrival of AI.
Agentio
Agentio is an AI-native advertising platform that lets brands buy, run, and measure creator ads at scale. Founded in 2023 by former Cameo president Arthur Leopold and former Spotify engineer Jonathan Meyers, it automates the end-to-end creator campaign lifecycle - matching brands with relevant YouTube (and now Meta) creators, briefing, brand-safety checks, contracting, payments, and real-time performance tracking. The company positions creator media as a programmatic channel, aiming to do for sponsored content what DoubleClick did for display advertising. It has raised $56.3M total, including a $40M Series B led by Forerunner in November 2025 at a $340M valuation.