Retailers are being pitched AI constantly right now. Most of them cannot tell us what the AI they are already using actually does. They cannot explain to their advertisers why a particular ad won an auction, or why a campaign is performing the way it is.
We believe this creates trust and control issues and have designed our AI to solve these problems.
AI should do something
That’s why we have only launched AI that moves the needle for retailers: more ad revenue, smarter operations, better outcomes for advertisers. We have been focused on capabilities that connect to real business results.
The industry is loud right now, and there is real pressure to match every announcement with a counter-announcement. We think the better position is being useful rather than loud.
Transparency is non-negotiable
One thing we hear from retailers consistently is that they cannot see inside their own platform. They do not know which signals fired, what the model weighted, or why one ad beat another. They are flying blind inside someone else's black box, and when their advertisers ask questions, they do not have answers.
At Kevel, we believe you should clearly understand your auction: which signals drove the decision, how the model weighted them, and why that outcome served your goals. This helps build trust and continued investment with your advertisers when your team can clearly explain auction dynamics.
It also ensures that your data remains secure as we do not train models across retailers.
Focused on your business, not ours
A lot of the conversation right now is about AI sophistication: who has the most advanced models, the biggest training sets, the flashiest demos.
Our AI has always been designed to fit into your existing stack and supplement where you need it most. Here are the questions we ask our retailer partners to advise on the best AI strategy: Are your advertisers getting better results? Is your team spending less time on manual work? Are you capturing revenue you were leaving on the table? Those things require the right model, applied to the right problem, with the right data.
Sustainability is a strategy
When we developed our AI products, we focused on broader applicability instead of a quick win. While this is a longer journey, it is actually the more sustainable option in the market. We built from the ground up and we focused on improvements that drove real outcomes versus a feature to address a current market trend.
We have also made some deliberate choices along the way about what we don’t do. We don’t tell you that agentic AI is about to reinvent your business overnight. We don’t release a capability just to match a competitor's announcement. We don’t ask you to hand over your data to train models that benefit someone else's network more than yours. This means that often we are not as vocal as our competitors in the market, however, we would rather you remember what we built than what we said.
What we are building toward
Over the coming months we will be publishing specific pieces on each part of our AI stack: how we approached relevancy, forecasting, audience creation, automated bidding, and more. Each topic will get a proper treatment: the problem it solves, how our approach works, and what it means for your network.
Our AI is focused on the same philosophies that guide all of Kevel’s technology: retailer controlled and transparent ad tech, designed to help retailers drive meaningful outcomes and build world class retail media programs.
