Creator marketing is moving deeper into the retail media stack as brands look for measurable ways to turn influencer reach into transactions. Levanta, a creator affiliate platform for e-commerce, has raised $22 million in Series B funding led by Volition Capital, bringing its total funding above $43 million.
The company plans to use the capital to expand its creator commerce infrastructure, add more retail marketplaces and develop what it calls Creator Commerce Media—a model designed to connect marketplace sellers with creators and affiliates beyond a retailer’s owned advertising channels.
Retail media has spent the past several years expanding from sponsored product listings into a broader advertising ecosystem. The next frontier may be what happens outside the retailer’s own properties.
Levanta is betting that creators and affiliates can become part of that expansion.
The company has raised $22 million in a Series B round led by Volition Capital, which previously led Levanta’s $20 million Series A in 2024. The latest financing brings Levanta’s total funding to more than $43 million.
The company says the new capital will fund continued development of its creator commerce technology and go-to-market operation, while accelerating expansion into additional retail marketplaces.
Levanta originally built its business around Amazon affiliate marketing. It has since expanded to support commerce across Amazon, Walmart, Shopify and other retail marketplaces.
The company reports that revenue grew 80% year over year in 2026.
From affiliate links to commerce infrastructure
The evolution reflects a broader change in creator marketing.
Influencer campaigns have traditionally been measured through reach, engagement and clicks. Affiliate marketing introduced a more direct connection to sales by compensating creators based on the transactions they generate.
Levanta is attempting to bring those models closer together.
Its platform gives brands access to more than 90,000 vetted creators, along with millions of additional creators through AI-powered Social Discovery. The company also offers automated product sampling, flat-rate creator collaborations with affiliate-style measurement and integrations with AI platforms including ChatGPT and Claude.
That combination is designed to make creator activation look more like a scalable media-buying workflow.
Instead of manually finding influencers, negotiating campaigns and attempting to reconcile performance data across platforms, brands can use a centralized system to identify creators, distribute products and measure resulting commerce activity.
The distinction matters as creator marketing becomes increasingly intertwined with performance advertising.
Creator Commerce Media targets the open internet
Levanta’s larger ambition is its Creator Commerce Media model.
Traditional retail media generally monetizes audiences that already exist within a retailer’s ecosystem. A consumer visits Amazon, Walmart or another commerce platform, encounters advertising and eventually makes a purchase.
Creator commerce reverses part of that journey.
A creator, publisher or affiliate encounters a consumer somewhere on the open internet and sends that consumer directly to a commerce destination.
For marketplaces, that could create demand that does not originate within their own websites or apps.
For brands, it provides another way to activate creators across the marketplaces where their products are already sold. For creators, it potentially opens access to marketing budgets that have historically been concentrated in retailer advertising and traditional digital media.
That makes Levanta’s strategy adjacent to the rapidly growing retail media network market, while also overlapping with affiliate marketing, influencer marketing and performance advertising.
Measurement is the critical piece
The opportunity depends heavily on attribution.
Brands have become more cautious about creator campaigns that produce large engagement numbers but offer limited evidence of incremental sales. Retail media has gained traction partly because retailers can connect advertising exposure to first-party transaction data.
Creator commerce needs a similar level of accountability.
Levanta’s platform is designed to connect creator activity with commerce outcomes across participating retail marketplaces. The company’s pitch is that the infrastructure can handle the economics between sellers, creators and marketplaces while tracking what happens after a consumer clicks through.
That could become increasingly valuable as advertisers shift budgets toward channels where performance can be demonstrated.
The challenge, however, is proving incrementality rather than simply assigning credit to the final affiliate interaction.
As creator, social, paid media and retail advertising overlap, advertisers will need measurement systems capable of distinguishing between a consumer who was genuinely influenced by a creator and one who was already close to purchasing.
AI expands creator discovery
AI is becoming another important component of the platform.
Levanta says its Social Discovery capabilities can expand access beyond its curated creator base to millions of creators. The company is also integrating with ChatGPT and Claude.
For brands, AI-assisted discovery could reduce one of the most labor-intensive parts of influencer marketing: finding creators whose audiences, content and commerce performance match a particular product.
That points toward a broader shift in creator technology.
Rather than treating creators simply as media placements, platforms are increasingly turning them into addressable commerce channels that can be discovered, activated and measured using software.
The model has similarities with programmatic advertising, although creator partnerships remain more dependent on content, relationships and individual audience characteristics than conventional ad inventory.
Retail media’s next expansion
Levanta’s funding comes as retail media increasingly moves beyond retailer-owned websites.
Amazon, Walmart and other major commerce platforms have built advertising businesses around first-party purchase data. At the same time, brands are investing more heavily in creators, social commerce and affiliate channels.
The intersection creates a potentially large opportunity.
If marketplaces can connect their sellers with external creators and publishers, they gain a way to generate demand without relying entirely on onsite advertising inventory.
That could also broaden the definition of retail media itself.
Instead of being limited to advertisements displayed on a retailer’s properties, commerce media could increasingly include the external networks of creators, publishers and affiliates that send consumers into those properties.
What the funding means for enterprise advertisers
For brands, Levanta’s expansion could make creator commerce more operationally similar to other performance marketing channels.
The important questions will be scale, measurement and integration.
Enterprise marketing teams will want creator discovery connected to existing commerce systems, reliable attribution across marketplaces and enough automation to manage large numbers of partnerships without creating another silo.
Levanta’s planned marketplace expansion is therefore strategically important. The more retail destinations the platform supports, the more useful its infrastructure could become to brands selling across multiple commerce channels.
The company is effectively trying to build a bridge between creator marketing, affiliate commerce and retail media.
Whether Creator Commerce Media becomes a distinct advertising category remains to be seen. But the underlying market movement is clear: retailers and brands increasingly want to turn creator attention into measurable commerce—and the infrastructure connecting those two sides is becoming a competitive layer of its own.
Market Landscape
The convergence of creator marketing, affiliate commerce and retail media is creating a new competitive segment within digital advertising.
Retail media platforms such as Amazon Ads and Walmart Connect primarily monetize audiences within retailer-controlled ecosystems. Creator commerce platforms operate further upstream, using creators and publishers to generate external demand.
Levanta’s strategy sits between these models.
The opportunity is potentially significant because brands already allocate budgets across influencer marketing, affiliate programs, retail media and performance advertising. Technology that connects those budgets to common commerce outcomes could reduce fragmentation.
Competition is likely to come from several directions, including affiliate networks, influencer platforms, creator marketplaces, retail media platforms and emerging AI-powered marketing technologies.
For enterprise advertisers, cross-marketplace attribution and incrementality will be the key differentiators—not simply creator reach.
Top Insights
- Levanta raised $22 million in Series B funding to expand creator commerce infrastructure across Amazon, Walmart, Shopify and additional retail marketplaces.
- The company is developing Creator Commerce Media, connecting marketplace sellers with creators and affiliates that generate demand beyond retailer-owned advertising environments.
- AI-powered Social Discovery expands creator sourcing, while integrations with ChatGPT and Claude aim to streamline creator identification and commerce workflows.
- Levanta’s model combines affiliate-level measurement with creator collaborations, product sampling and discovery to make influencer marketing more performance-oriented.
- The expansion highlights the convergence of retail media, affiliate marketing and creator commerce as brands seek measurable demand beyond traditional retailer advertising.
Get in touch with our Adtech experts
