Retail media, or your website
Kevel is an API-first ad platform built for retail media networks and marketplaces, and it now ships a white-label self-serve console of its own. The real difference is who each one is for, and whether you can see the price without booking a call.
What Kevel sells
Kevel, formerly Adzerk, started as pure ad decisioning: an API that answers which ad wins, under what targeting, at what price, with what pacing, and leaves the rest to your code.
It is more than that now. Kevel Console is a campaign management interface with self-service and white-label branding. Kevel Audience handles first-party data, and there is an ad server and an AI layer alongside. The API is still there and still the deepest way in.
The aim has narrowed, though. Almost everything they publish is about retail media networks, marketplaces, delivery apps and travel brands putting sponsored placements inside their own products.
What Pyrobid sells
Pyrobid is a finished white-label ad server for a website. An advertiser lands on your domain, signs up under your brand, funds an account, targets, bids above your floor and uploads a creative. See how it works.
Everything happens in the portal. There is no API to integrate and nothing to build: the advertiser journey, the payments and the reporting are the product.
So the split is not portal against no portal. It is a platform for commerce media, sold by a sales team, against a product for a publisher with a website and a price tag you can read.
What an API will not do for you
Kevel answers which ad wins. Everything a publisher needs around that answer is a project.
A portal that exists on day one
With Kevel you brief engineers, build screens, wire payments and ship it before an advertiser can buy anything. Pyrobid is live the afternoon you sign up, in your colours, with your prices on it.
A price you can read before you commit
Kevel publishes no price, no trial and no way to start without a call. Ours is $29.99 a month on the website, and you can start today without speaking to anybody.
Selling, not integrating
An API is a component. A publisher who wants advertisers buying placements this quarter needs a shop front, card payments, ad approval and reporting the advertiser can read. That is the whole product here rather than a feature of it.
Where Pyrobid wins
A price you can read, a door you can walk through, and a product sized for one site.
A price you can see
$29.99 a month to one million impressions, $99.99 to five million, both published on our pricing page. Nothing is an add-on: the portal, your branding, the full targeting set are in both plans. Kevel publishes no figure at all.
Live in about five minutes, with nobody on the call
Create a placement and paste a tag. The zone approves the first domain it serves on by itself, so there is nothing to verify first. No demo, no architecture review, no onboarding project.
Built for a website, not a marketplace
Display slots on pages you publish, sold to advertisers who want your readers. If that is your inventory, a retail media platform is the wrong shape and an expensive way to find out.
No revenue share on your direct deals
Stated permanently and publicly. What an advertiser pays you for space on your own site is yours, every time.
Restricted verticals, stated out loud
Crypto, cannabis and gambling publishers are supported and we say so. Take payment by bank transfer, invoice, cash or stablecoin and issue a voucher that redeems as ad credit, so no card processor gets a veto on your industry.
Sized for one person running one site
A publisher doing a few hundred thousand impressions a month is a real customer here. At that size a platform sold by a sales team will not return your email.
What your advertisers see
Your brand, on your own domain. They sign up, fund an account and build a campaign in five steps. You approve the artwork before anything runs.
Illustration of step one of the advertiser campaign builder, on your own domain under your branding.
A screenshot is still only a picture. The demo is the running product, read only, with the login published and nothing to install.
Side by side
Kevel details are taken from kevel.com, accessed 16 September 2026. Fields are marked not published where no figure appears on their site.
$29.99/mo
|
KevelNot published | |
|---|---|---|
| Commercials | ||
| Published price | $29.99/mo to one million | None, contact sales |
| Second tier | $99.99/mo to five million | Not published |
| Setup fee | None | Not published |
| Revenue share | None on direct deals | Not published |
| Minimum commitment | None, monthly | Not published |
| Free trial | 14 days, self-serve | Book a call |
| What arrives on day one | ||
| Advertiser-facing console | Included, branded as yours | Kevel Console, branded as yours |
| Campaign builder and creative upload | Included | Included |
| Advertiser billing and payment | Included, any payment method | Not published |
| Decisioning API | Not offered | The original product |
| Time to live | About five minutes | An onboarding project |
| Engineers required | None | None for Console, yes for custom |
| Control over the decision | ||
| Custom ranking logic you write yourself | Not offered, our auction is fixed | Yours to define |
| Sponsored placements inside your own app | Not the design | The design |
| Retail media forecasting and yield tools | Not offered | Included |
| Auction behaviour | Floor price, then delivery split in proportion to bids | Yours to define |
| Targeting an advertiser can set without you | ||
| Country, region and city | ✓ | Included |
| Device type, brand and model | ✓ | Included |
| ISP and carrier | ✓ | Not published |
| Day-parting, contextual keywords, 24 hour frequency capping | ✓ | Not published |
Your network keeps what you do not sell
Every ad request runs down a chain. Your direct deals get first refusal at your price. Anything unsold falls through to what you run today.
Choose Pyrobid if
- ›You sell display space on a website you own
- ›You want to know the price before you commit to anything
- ›You want to start today without booking a call
- ›You are one person, or a small team, with one site or a few
Common questions
Does Kevel have an advertiser portal?
Yes. Kevel Console is an out of the box campaign management interface with self-service, and Kevel offer white-label branding on it so it carries your logo and theme. What they do not publish is a price, a trial or a way to sign up without talking to somebody.
Is Kevel the same as Adzerk?
Yes. Adzerk renamed to Kevel. Older documentation, case studies and blog posts under the Adzerk name are the same company. Be careful with the old material though: a lot of it describes the API-only product, and Console did not exist then.
What does Kevel cost?
Not published. There is no monthly price on their site, and any real number depends on your request volume and on what you need built, so you find out in a sales process. Ours is on the page: $29.99 and $99.99 a month, and you can start today.
If we both have a self-serve console, what is left?
Who it is for, and how you buy it. Kevel is aimed at retail media networks and marketplaces, sold through a sales team, with the deepest work still done against the API. Pyrobid is aimed at a publisher with a website, sold at a price on a page, live the same afternoon. Very few buyers are genuinely weighing both.
Could I build my own portal on the Kevel API?
Yes, as a software project. CoinGecko is Kevel's own example of a self-serve product built on their APIs: engineers, a roadmap and a maintenance bill that never quite finishes. Pyrobid's portal is live the afternoon you sign up.
Do I have to drop AdSense to use Pyrobid?
No. Our fallback code runs in the page rather than in an iframe, so AdSense and similar fill what you have not sold directly. Google programme policies do not require exclusivity. By default one unsold view in ten shows your Advertise Here card instead, and you can switch that off.
What the advertiser actually touches
The screen on the left is the real product, on a live tenant. The right is what an advertiser gets from Kevel.
Kevel
Kevel Console is a self-serve campaign console and it can carry your branding. What they do not publish is a picture of it, a price for it, or a way to try it without booking a call. The screen on the left you can go and look at right now on our demo tenant.
No call, no quote, no minimum.
Fourteen days free, a price you can see before you commit, and an advertiser portal that is already written. Your existing ads keep running underneath the whole time.
Start free trial14 days free. Your existing ads keep running. Cancel anytime.
Kevel details were taken from kevel.com on 16 September 2026, including their Kevel Console page for the self-service and white-label branding claims. Kevel was formerly Adzerk. Every commercial field is marked not published because no monthly figure appears on their site. Pyrobid prices are our own, published at /pricing/. See also Pyrobid vs DanAds and the rest of the comparisons.