Kerv.ai
AI ad-tech company powering WBD's scene-level contextual ad targeting on Max and discovery+.
Last refreshed: 17 May 2026 · Appears in 1 active topic
How does Kerv.ai make TV ads match what is actually happening on screen?
Timeline for Kerv.ai
Mentioned in: WBD rebuilds ad stack on AWS agents
Media's AI PivotProvided scene-level contextual ad insertion technology for WBD's Max platform
Media's AI Pivot: WBD ships agentic ads on its last upfrontWhat does Kerv.ai do and how does it work?
What is WBD Scene-Level Moments and who powers it?
Why is scene-level ad targeting better than traditional contextual advertising?
Background
Kerv.ai is an AI-powered advertising technology company that partnered with Warner Bros. Discovery to power Scene-Level Moments, WBD's contextual scene-level ad targeting product unveiled at the company's 2026 Upfront on 13 May at Madison Square Garden. The technology analyses individual scenes within a TV programme or film and matches advertisements to the content of that specific scene in real time — for example, serving a travel ad during a beach resort scene in a WBD drama.
Kerv.ai specialises in interactive and contextual video intelligence, using computer vision and natural language processing to understand what is happening in a frame rather than relying on blunt keyword or genre tags. The company's technology enables advertisers to buy against precise contextual signals — a product category, an activity, an emotion within a scene — at a granularity that traditional contextual targeting cannot achieve. WBD's adoption of Kerv for Scene-Level Moments represents one of the highest-profile deployments of scene-level AI ad tech by a major US broadcaster.
The partnership with WBD is significant for Kerv because it extends Scene-Level Moments across not just HBO Max but the full WBD Stream footprint, including discovery+, giving Kerv's technology access to one of the largest premium video catalogues in US streaming.
