Why we invested in Marpipe, closing the intelligence gap between creative and marketing
Advertising in the Internet age has largely focused on programmatic automation designed to replace a hit-or-miss legacy system that made it difficult to measure results.
While programmatic advertising has helped optimize brand marketing, it has fallen short when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of creative content. But now, Marpipe is addressing that shortfall with an innovative marketing technology platform that automates the design of multiple variations and measures the effectiveness of each design element.
Marpipe's mission is to provide accountability to both the design and media teams. The software-as-a-service company has designed a platform that bridges the gap between designers and brand marketers — facilitating analysis and insights that demonstrate which creative elements work the best.
We believe that Marpipe is well-positioned to scale a unique solution that enables brands to create, test, and optimize digital advertising. The company’s innovative platform, at the confluence of design and marketing, has attracted interest from investors that range from our team here at Samsung Next to Adobe, Stage 2 Capital, and Math Capital.
Marpipe differentiates itself by giving brands the ability to create and measure the effectiveness of different creative designs. It facilitates the creation of hundreds of ad variations and provides real-time insights about which components are most effective. The Marpipe platform provides feedback based on how end users engage with an ad.
What’s more, the Marpipe platform provides a single hub for creating, organizing, and storing brand assets. An easy-to-use canvas simplifies the process of tweaking designs, such as easily changing the color of hat from white to black. Tight integration with Facebook and Instagram means that ad variations can be batch uploaded for testing. Rapid testing at scale makes it easy to identify the most effective ad variations. Analytics are available for every aspect of an ad, from the copy to the color to layout.
We think the effectiveness of design is going to become an increasingly important tool for target marketing online. Marpipe’s platform is also optimized for changes to Apple’s iOS – enabling users to opt out of tracking in apps – and for a cookieless Web, in which marketers will have to be more vigilant about protecting consumer privacy. Marpipe also facilitates compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), a harbinger of more government regulation on the horizon.
Marpipe is bridging art and science in a way that delivers precision analytics. The company has already successfully developed creative and analytics tools for images. In the future, we think this functionality is likely to expand into audio and video, increasing the opportunity and the scope of Marpipe's impact in advertising.
Moreover, the company’s founder-market-fit is spot-on. Dan Pantelo, founder and CEO, previously ran a digital marketing ad agency, and has hands-on experience with advertising and SEO. Meanwhile, Jeremy Bloom, Chief Revenue Officer, spent a decade with TubeMogul, which was acquired by Adobe in 2016. Bloom managed a platform focused on providing end-to-end advertising and data management for everything from online to television.
Pantelo and Bloom are in a good position to scale Marpipe as it builds out marketing technology for automating the creative testing process. Marpipe is replacing assumptions and ambiguity about what works with objective analytics. We think helping advertisers make smarter decisions is a winning formula for everyone.
Brandon Hoffman is an Investor for Samsung Next. Samsung Next's investment strategy is limited to its own views and does not reflect the vision or strategy of any other Samsung business unit, including, but not limited to, Samsung Electronics.