Pilotdesk

PilotDesk — rebranded in April 2025 as Swivel — is a New York-based adtech company that builds a no-code AI and machine-learning workflow automation platform for advertising operations and account management. The platform lets users configure "autopilots": rules combining a trigger (such as any event in an ad management platform, or a campaign performance indicator) with an action, which the system then executes automatically across the platforms a customer uses. Users can specify these rules with natural-language prompts rather than engineering work — for example, instructing the system to raise bids across ad auctions by a set percentage over a holiday weekend and lower them afterward.

The product targets both ad buyers and ad sellers, automating tasks that have traditionally required manual administrative effort: campaign setup, budget monitoring, yield management, order management, campaign tracking, and post-campaign reporting and presentation creation. Campaigns are monitored continuously, including outside normal working hours, and adjustments are applied across multiple advertising platforms such as The Trade Desk, Amazon, Roku and Google. Following the Series A, the company said it would focus development on advanced AI orchestration, unified analytics and expanded integrations with ad servers, DSPs, SSPs and OMS platforms.

Founding story

The concept came from the founders' years of observing user behavior on adtech platforms while running SpringServe, a connected-TV ad server they co-founded and sold to Magnite in 2021 for $31 million. They noted that thousands of ad operations professionals log into multiple adtech platforms daily to set campaigns live, adjust budgets and targeting, and produce reports, and that clients rarely used even advanced ad servers to their full potential because staff were occupied with busy work. PilotDesk is the second company Matt Dearborn, Joe Hirsch and Rich Lin have founded together.

Business model

The company sells a no-code, platform-agnostic automation layer that sits on top of the ad tech stacks its customers already use. It integrates via customers' APIs rather than through negotiated partnerships with each individual platform, which allows it to operate across ad servers, DSPs, SSPs, OMS and business intelligence platforms. In its earlier stage the company delivered much of the work as a managed service — helping clients analyze inventory, decide which autopilots and triggers to set up, and monitoring and adjusting them — alongside the self-serve software. Buy-side and sell-side products are organized separately, and each client's autopilot operates independently so that publisher yield models do not influence buy-side campaign optimization models.

Customers pay a flat subscription fee for the platform; publishers and agencies using the service through ad server integrations are the paying clients, while the ad servers themselves are integration partners rather than customers.

Traction

At the time of its May 2024 seed announcement the company had 12 employees. By June 2024 it had ad server integrations with SpringServe and Publica and six paying publisher and agency clients, with a stated goal of reaching 10 paying clients that year; its president described the revenue picture as positive for that stage. A data platform listing shows total raised of $6.8 million across two rounds from 11 investors and headcount in the 11-50 range.

Latest developments

In April 2025 the company raised a $5.8 million Series A led by Tribeca Venture Partners and Ardent Venture Partners, with participation from Motley Fool Ventures, Roster Capital and Aperiam Ventures, and rebranded from PilotDesk to Swivel. Proceeds were earmarked for team growth and product development in advanced AI orchestration, unified analytics, and expanded integrations with ad servers, DSPs, SSPs and OMS platforms.