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New Kargo platform promises AI-Enabled ads for small business. By Mercedes Cardona October 1, 2026 The latest competitor in adtech's artificial intelligence race made a flashy entrance in New York this week. The advertising platform Kargo introduced Karlo, its new agentic AI platform, at a star-studded event before clients and publishers. Karlo combines Kargo's proprietary performance data, premium audience data and Kargo's contextual signals to power a group of AI agents that can perform most of the planning, buying and creative functions required to launch campaigns through natural language prompts. The company claims this will allow smaller marketing teams to plan, create, and activate campaigns across the Internet, CTV, and social media from one system and activate quickly at scale. The setup takes minutes and campaigns can be adjusted in real time. Campaigns can be launched and adjusted and reporting can be handled, all from a single self-serve platform. The agents are able to combine workflows and media buys, incorporating existing creative into real-time decision-making, scoring and adjustments, along with targeting and bidding. During the launch event, the company demonstrated the platform using real-life clients as models, including retailer American Eagle Outfitters, beauty brand Sulwhasoo and the energy drink Gorgie. For American Eagle, the platform pulled together a holiday online campaign in minutes, from taking the brief to targeting audiences and orchestrating inventory to reach them. The platform's creative agent, Leonardo, can take assets and perform a real-time creative review to choose what makes sense for the brand's goals, noted Casey Gordon, Kargo's director of product, creative. The ability to browse creative assets built for the brand and adapt them with no design experience necessary is a key feature, noted Michelle Cordeiro Grant, founder and CEO of Gorgie. The Kargo demonstration showed how the Karlo platform can browse assets including images and video and adapt them with a few keystrokes. "Think of all the time we are saving on monotonous tasks," said Cordeiro Grant. "We're unlocking a whole new channel." The platform can also activate campaigns by building contextual audiences, using content signals and pairing them with publishing inventory. The number of personas it can generate in seconds is "amazing," said Jazmine Gonzalez, senior manager, performance marketing at Sulwhasoo. "It's a huge timesaver for us," said Gonzalez. She noted Karlo can factor in budget and targeting and then either adapt existing creative or build new assets, all using natural language prompts. The Karlo platform makes Kargo's capabilities available to a wider scope of clients than the company had been able to service before, said Harry Kargman, founder and CEO of Kargo. Over all its years in business, it had faced the challenge of growing its client base but being "maxed out," said Kargman. Karlo is an option for partners who want to self-service AI technology, he said. He noted how the demonstration showed it was able to launch three campaigns in about 10 minutes. "This takes the power of Kargo and puts it in the hands of small business," he said. No single platform has figured out how to unlock all these capabilities across all kinds of media before, a key differentiator for Kargo, he said. Kargman acknowledged the platform launched with more effective functionality for awareness campaigns, but Kargo is already working on fine-tuning Karlo's performance marketing capabilities. He noted Kargo has agreements with Amazon and Walmart Connect that will add data to enable more performance marketing efforts, but "there is more work to do." Kargo's internal outcomes team is "so close," he said. Gordon noted the work continues to improve the platform and there they "have a lot of exciting things coming," including more publishing partnerships. Karlo will be able to innovative with brands in other formats, she said.

Kargo launches Karlo: AI media buying for small businesses. October 1, 2026 12:00pm Kargo, the AI-powered advertising platform, announced Thursday the general availability of Karlo, which the company describes as "a self-serve agentic media buying platform built for smaller teams and businesses." Karlo opens up agentic media buying access for small businesses in fashion apparel and retail. The company said Karlo gives smaller businesses access to the same creative and media technology Kargo has developed over two decades, but in a simplified and self-serve format. Under the hood, Karlo is powered by Kargo's Creative Science and Media Intelligence platforms. The latter combines premium audience data with Kargo's contextual signals, the company said, adding that smaller teams can use the platform "to plan, create and activate campaigns across the open web, CTV and social from one system." Smaller businesses can now run connected video campaigns that previously required larger, enterprise-scale budgets. Onboarding is fast with setup taking just minutes. "Most of the agentic tools launching right now are built around bidding and targeting, functions that were already pretty well-automated," said Harry Kargman, founder and CEO of Kargo, in a statement. "Creative usually sits outside that loop, untouched, even though it's the biggest lever on performance. Karlo takes the creative a business already has and incorporates it into decision-making, scoring, and adjustments, alongside targeting and bidding, in real time." The CEO said smaller teams now get the same advantage "our biggest clients have had for years, without needing the budget or staff they'd normally need to get there." The company said Karlo was used in an Ad Council campaign. Karlo helped drive a 21 percent lift in ad recall and a 10 percent gain in aided awareness. Instead of setting up separate buys, often with multiple buyers, for CTV, social and the open web, the company said Karlo brings all three into one flow that is built around a single audience target. The platform evaluates performance data so campaigns can be improved upon when they are live. DJ Perera, chief media officer at the Ad Council, said Karlo gave the organization "an innovative way to meaningfully engage an audience that can truly benefit from mental health messaging and resources." When asked about the challenges SMBs face when it comes to media buying, Kargman told Sourcing Journal that smaller businesses have the exact same problem as big advertisers. "Their customers are spread across more places, but they have fewer people and fewer resources to reach them." He said. "We wanted to present a solution with Karlo. We have spent years building this technology for large advertisers, and Karlo makes it available to smaller teams without requiring separate buyers for CTV, social, and the open web or someone constantly watching the campaign." The CEO said the company is not giving smaller businesses a "watered-down version of what bigger advertisers have." The company is just making the same capabilities much easier to use. Regarding Karlo's market position, Kargman said what sets Karlo apart "is we're specifically offering the target to smaller teams. It gives them an opportunity to streamline their campaign content that previously required enterprise-scale budgets and staff." But the value proposition of Karlo goes even further. Creative and media are still optimized separately, and brands are forced to stitch together multiple platforms to execute campaigns, even as consumer behavior continues to shift across channels, the CEO said. "Karlo is built for that reality, bringing everything into one system that works together, drives performance and removes unnecessary complexity." Kargman said Karlo creates solutions "to eliminate fragmentation across platforms and channels, bringing creative and media together to drive stronger performance and reach audiences using real signals instead of outdated segments." SJ Newsletters