Clearbanc and Pencil Partner to Help eCommerce Businesses Grow Using AI

Creative AI company Pencil has partnered with the world’s largest e-commerce investor Clearbanc to provide their customers with the latest innovation in online video advertising, Machine Generated Creative (MGC).

These MGC ads can be created in minutes and consistently double return on ad spend for brands. It is anticipated that companies using the Pencil platform will be able to unlock new audiences on Facebook and Instagram and grow revenue faster.

MGC online video ads are generated by artificial intelligence (AI), while learning what resonates with audiences, in order to systematically deliver better results for brands.

Using historic ad performance data, Pencil is able to understand what in the ad is resonating with customers. It can then generate new batches of ad ideas which are new and distinct, but which share winning characteristics with past winners. In this way Pencil learns what works while continuously exploring new ideas that could resonate with audiences.

• Partnership: Pencil’s AI-powered creative advertising platform to help Clearbanc’s portfolio companies create video ads in minutes to boost revenues
• Revenue: Machine Generated Creative ads, exclusively made by Pencil, are already doubling returns on ad spend for online brands
• Technology: Pencil uses OpenAI’s API which provides access to GPT-3, one of the world’s most powerful language models, and also connects with Facebook’s API to learn from historic ads and improve performance week-on-week

Pencil analyzed over 100 campaigns that used MGC video ads and found the best MGC ads delivered an average return on ad spend (ROAS) 2x that of other ads the brands were running. One brand’s MGC campaign delivered 7x higher ROAS.

Will Hanschell, CEO and co-founder of Pencil commented:

“This partnership with Clearbanc underlines the success we’ve had with our Machine Generated Creative ads for brands around the world. These ads are helping ecommerce brands and agencies grow, and I am confident we can help them scale further.”

This partnership announcement comes hot on the heels of Pencil joining as a creative partner in Facebook Marketing Partners, a program that connects businesses to an ecosystem of specialists. More than 200 million businesses worldwide use Facebook’s apps to connect with customers and grow, and over 10 million of them run advertising campaigns each month.

Pencil customer James Harding, Head of Growth at Lyka Pet Food said:

"Pencil gives us the ability to generate ads quickly and more importantly, come up with ideas we might not have otherwise. It's been a massive win for us essentially."

Pencil leverages proprietary technology to generate ad video, derive insights and make predictions, as well as integrating the OpenAI API to generate ad copy.

The OpenAI API provides access to GPT-3, one of the world’s most powerful language models. Pencil is among the first companies approved to use it commercially. This approval requires strict criteria in AI safety and ethics.

Daniel Rodic, Head of Market Development added:

^{“Clearbanc was created to help Founders grow their businesses by using our non-dilutive capital to invest in predictable and repeatable expenses like marketing spend. Pencil’s technology offers a simple solution for brands in our portfolio to improve their return on ad spend and ultimately maximize the effectiveness of the capital they deploy.”}

Clearbanc has deployed over US$1.6b to more than 4,000 ecommerce and SaaS businesses.