Flam vs TollBit

AI Interactive Ads Bring Personalization at Scale Closer

During a Brandweek 2026 fireside chat, ADWEEK's Ryan Joe discussed the potential of AI-driven interactive ads with Kumar Shah, head of sales at Flam, and Melissa Berger, chief solutions officer at Digitas. Flam's AI content platform, which recently secured Series B funding, offers a tool called 'Flicks' that enables brands to create dynamic, responsive ads. The AI generates multiple creative variants based on user interactions and existing customer data, aiming to deliver personalized experiences in real time. Shah emphasized speed, noting a 10-second ad can be produced in about 30 minutes, while Berger highlighted the importance of clean data and the risk of alienating users with poor experiences. Human oversight is integrated to ensure brand safety.

• Flam announced a Series B funding round.
• Flam's AI tool 'Flicks' creates interactive, personalized ads in real time.
• Flicks can build a 10-second ad in 30 minutes or less.

Flam raises $40 million in Series B led by QED Investors

Flam has raised USD $40 million in a Series B funding round led by QED Investors. The round also included Claypond Capital, Martin Chavez, Olivier Pomel, Venky Harinarayan and Shah Rukh Khan. Existing investors RTP Global and Dovetail increased their commitments. The company has signed more than 100 enterprise customers over the past six quarters, including Google, Grab and KFC. The new funding will support R&D, product expansion, and international growth.

Flam Announces $40M Series B Led by QED Investors, Backed by Shah Rukh Khan

Flam announced a $40M Series B funding round led by QED Investors, with participation from Shah Rukh Khan. The company also rebranded its positioning to 'AI for the internet beyond videos' and introduced new product lines: Flicks, Airboards, and Visual Agents.

The Netacea + TollBit Integration is Now Live

We’re excited to announce our new integration with Netacea, the Bot and Agent Trust Management company for commerce and content. Together, we’re helping website owners enforce access rules and unlock new revenue streams from the surging amount of AI bot traffic hitting their sites.

European publishers face heavier AI bot scraping

TollBit's H1 2026 analysis of 3,906 publishers (456 European) using a >987 billion-visit dataset found a sharp rise in AI-powered scraping: more than 22 billion bot accesses, about 1.9 billion events that bypassed or ignored robots.txt, and scraping up ~20% from January to June. European sites endure roughly four times the median AI scrapes of North American peers and far fewer human referrals from AI apps; TollBit measured about 179 automated page fetches per human referral and the scrape-to-referral ratio climbed from 150:1 in Q1 to 227:1 in Q2. Only 0.05% of external referrals to the European cohort came from AI apps (Google supplied ~84%), and AI-driven referrals generate far fewer clicks. Tests of commercial scrapers retrieved content on nearly all tested sites. Cloudflare has started blocking training crawlers on new domains and plans finer bot classifications and paid access from September 2026.

• Scope: TollBit analyzed H1 2026 across 3,906 publishers (456 European) within a >987 billion-visit dataset and identified >22 billion AI-bot accesses.
• Europe disproportionately affected: median AI scrapes per site ~4x higher than North America; scraping rose ~20% Jan–Jun 2026; overall measured ratio ~179 bot fetches per human referral, rising from 150:1 in Q1 to 227:1 in Q2.
• Referrals: only 0.05% of external referrals to the European cohort came from AI applications; Google supplied ~84% of referrals; AI chatbot referrals generate far fewer click-throughs than classic search (~96% fewer reported).