Noise Secures $5.5 Million Seed Round to Revolutionize Influencer Marketing with Everyday Creators.

Noise, an innovative marketing platform, is poised to transform the landscape of digital advertising by connecting brands with a vast network of content creators at significantly lower costs than traditional influencer engagements or standard advertising campaigns. The company’s distinctive approach leverages the power of everyday individuals, enabling brands to achieve unprecedented reach and content diversity.

On Wednesday, Noise announced a successful $5.5 million seed funding round, propelling its total capital raised to $7.2 million. The investment round was spearheaded by prominent firms Capital Midwest, M25, and Grishin Robotics. Additional participation came from Capitalize VC and seasoned operators from leading companies such as DoorDash, signaling strong confidence in Noise’s disruptive model. This fresh capital infusion is earmarked for critical investments in expanding product capabilities and scaling the team through strategic hiring initiatives.

At the core of Noise’s proposition is its accessible platform, designed for anyone with a smartphone to become a content creator, regardless of their current follower count. Users can simply download the Noise app, where they are presented with a curated selection of brand campaigns. Creators then develop and publish content for these campaigns across their preferred social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. A key differentiator in Noise’s payment structure is its "per-view" model, which compensates creators based on the actual engagement their content generates, rather than a fixed upfront fee. This performance-based compensation aligns incentives and ensures brands are paying for measurable impact.

For brands, Noise offers a streamlined and highly scalable solution to their content marketing needs. Companies can sign up to submit their content brief requests and specify their budget. From this initial input, Noise automates and manages the entire campaign lifecycle, eliminating the operational complexities typically associated with influencer marketing. This includes the arduous tasks of sourcing suitable content creators, managing individual client relationships, and handling disparate payment processes. By centralizing these functions, Noise empowers brands to launch and run campaigns simultaneously across thousands of content creators, achieving a scale that would be logistically prohibitive through traditional methods.

Diego Kafie, CEO of Noise and one of its co-founders, emphasized the efficiency and scale the platform provides. "Our top brands work with several thousand creators on autopilot," Kafie stated, highlighting the seamless integration and automation Noise brings to large-scale content generation. The platform’s current customer base largely comprises mobile applications and startups operating with more constrained budgets, who are particularly keen on employing effective influencer marketing strategies without incurring prohibitive costs. However, Noise harbors ambitions to expand its reach, ultimately aiming to partner with companies of all sizes.

Kafie elaborated on the strategic advantage for these early adopters: "They are the most interested in reaching a really wide range of potential customers, making them the prime users for something like Noise, where they can easily recruit a small army of people to become their biggest users and advocates." He further underscored the platform’s value proposition, adding, "This gives brands unprecedented level of content diversity and reach at a fraction of the cost of other traditional marketing playbooks."

Noise’s entry into the market is particularly timely, capitalizing on the burgeoning influencer economy. This rapidly expanding sector sees a significant portion of the younger generation—a striking 57% of Gen Z—aspiring to become influencers. Moreover, just over 40% of U.S. adults overall express a desire to participate in content creation. Noise joins a growing cohort of content creator infrastructure companies, such as Billo and JoinBrands, all working to build robust ecosystems that support the creator economy.

The genesis of Noise dates back to 2025, when it was launched by co-founders Diego Kafie, Stu Feldt, and Nic Weber. Their journey to Noise was serendipitous, emerging from two years spent developing a mobile game app called Playbite. It was during their efforts to scale Playbite that the founders discovered the immense potential of their current model. Kafie recounted their experimental marketing strategies for Playbite: "We tried a bunch of different creative marketing strategies." This included an initiative to recruit their own gamers and train them to produce social content promoting the app. "We started with five, ten, 25, then 100 people," he continued. "Before we knew it, our installs were skyrocketing as this small army of people went to places like TikTok and posted engaging content daily about mobile games and our app specifically."

This grassroots approach yielded remarkable results, achieving substantial growth "at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing playbooks," as Kafie noted. The reason for this cost efficiency was clear: they were empowering and educating ordinary individuals to become content creators from scratch. Kafie recognized the financial barrier of established creators, stating, "Had we gone to established creators with big followings and clout, their rates would’ve been cost-prohibitive for our scrappy startup budget." This pivotal realization directly informed the development of Noise, which now boasts an impressive 1.5 million creators on its platform.

For creators, Noise offers a tangible pathway to monetize their creativity. CEO Kafie proudly shared that the company’s top creators are earning over six figures annually. Noise generates revenue by taking a fee from the payments brands make to creators once views are successfully delivered. This model ensures creators are rewarded for their impact and engagement.

Addressing potential concerns about creator compensation, Kafie pushed back against the notion that Noise might pay creators less than they could earn independently. He clarified that brands set their proposed rates for campaigns, and creators retain the autonomy to accept or decline offers. He reiterated that Noise’s primary focus is on "working with everyday people and turning them into brand new creators."

Recognizing the increasing difficulty of breaking into the influencer sphere, Kafie believes Noise provides a vital solution for many aspiring creators. The platform mitigates the significant stress, time commitment, and financial investment typically required to achieve widespread recognition in content creation. When users first join Noise, they undergo a series of specialized training modules designed to equip them with the skills needed to create effective content for brands. Initially, new creators may access a limited range of campaigns, but as they complete more training and successfully undertake more work, they unlock access to higher-paid opportunities.

"By democratizing ‘becoming a creator’ to literally anyone with a smartphone," Kafie concluded, "we’re bringing costs down for brands, but enabling millions of people to make their first dollar on the internet." This vision underscores Noise’s dual commitment: to providing cost-effective, scalable marketing solutions for businesses and to fostering a more inclusive and accessible creator economy for individuals.

Further enhancing its value proposition, Noise recently unveiled its "Organic-to-Ads" program. This innovative feature allows brands to leverage the high-performing video content created by Noise’s network of creators and repurpose it for paid advertising campaigns on platforms like Meta and TikTok. This is in addition to the organic reach generated by the creators’ own posts. Kafie explained the mechanism: "The creators still post to platforms. But in addition, the brands can now put paid ads spend behind those creatives to reach more people." This program offers brands a powerful synergy, combining authentic, user-generated content with targeted paid distribution to maximize campaign effectiveness and reach.