Advertisers now have a cheaper route to mass creator content, after Noise raised $5.5 million to accelerate product work, expand hiring and scale its pay-per-view creator marketplace. The round was led by Capital Midwest, M25 and Grishin Robotics, and included participation from CapitalizeVC and operators from DoorDash. The funding lifts Noise’s total capital to $7.2 million.
Noise positions itself as a lower-cost alternative to traditional influencer campaigns by recruiting ordinary smartphone users instead of established creators. The platform already lists 1.5 million creators, who can view open brand briefs, produce short-form videos for TikTok, Instagram, Facebook or YouTube, and get paid based on the views their posts receive rather than receiving a flat fee.
Brands upload briefs and budgets, and Noise manages creator sourcing, payments and campaign logistics so advertisers can run campaigns across thousands of contributors simultaneously. CEO Diego Kafie said the approach produces scale for advertisers while creating new earning pathways for people who have not previously monetised social content. “Our top brands work with several thousand creators on autopilot,” Kafie said. He added that top performers on the platform clear more than six figures a year, and that Noise collects a fee from what brands pay creators after views have been delivered.
The product built out of an earlier experiment. Noise launched in 2025, after founders Diego Kafie, Stu Feldt and Nic Weber pivoted from a mobile game called Playbite, where they tested recruiting players to produce marketing content. The founders say those grassroots efforts drove installs at a fraction of traditional marketing costs and informed the current product.
Recent additions include Organic-to-Ads, a feature that lets brands repurpose creator-made videos as paid ads on Meta and TikTok while creators continue to post the same content organically. Noise reports many of its initial customers are mobile apps and other startups with limited marketing budgets, though the company says it plans to sell to businesses of all sizes.
Noise will apply the new capital to broaden product capabilities, expand hiring, and scale recruitment and campaign operations as it pushes into more advertiser verticals.
