Marketing Platform Noise Secures $5.5M Seed Round to Scale Everyday Creator Campaigns

Marketing platform Noise has announced a $5.5 million seed funding round to fuel its mission of connecting brands with everyday content creators at a fraction of the cost associated with traditional influencer marketing or standard digital ad campaigns.

The latest investment round was led by Capital Midwest, M25, and Grishin Robotics, bringing the startup’s total capital raised to $7.2 million. Additional participation in the round came from Capitalize VC and notable operators from companies such as DoorDash. With the fresh capital, the startup plans to expand its product capabilities and grow its team as it taps into a rapidly expanding market for user-generated digital content.

Noise operates on a model designed to bypass the traditional hurdles and high costs of influencer marketing. Rather than sourcing high-profile influencers with massive followings and demanding rate cards, Noise relies on everyday people. Anyone can download the application regardless of their current follower count. Once inside the app, users are presented with a variety of active brand campaigns they can join and create content for on their preferred social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube.

Instead of paying creators a flat fee upfront, Noise structures compensation on a performance basis, paying creators per view. Brands sign up for the platform to share their content brief requests and designated budgets, while Noise handles the operational backend. This setup allows brands to scale their marketing efforts without enduring the headaches of sourcing individual content creators, negotiating separate contracts, or managing manual payments one by one. According to the company, brands can run campaigns simultaneously across thousands of content creators on autopilot.

The startup enters the market at a time when the broader influencer economy is experiencing unprecedented cultural and economic participation. Recent studies indicate that more than half of Generation Z and just over 40 percent of U.S. adults overall aspire to become influencers. Noise joins a growing cohort of content infrastructure companies, such as Billo and JoinBrands, that are trying to streamline how brands acquire authentic video content.

Noise was launched in 2025 by Diego Kafie, Stu Feldt, and Nic Weber. The trio spent the prior two years building a mobile gaming app called Playbite, an experience that directly inspired the creation of Noise. Kafie notes that the platform has already amassed 1.5 million creators, with top participants earning more than six figures annually. The platform generates revenue by taking a fee from the total amount brands pay out to creators once verified views are delivered.

Currently, many of Noise’s core customers are mobile applications and startups operating on lean budgets who want to leverage the power of influencer marketing without the enterprise-level price tag. However, the long-term goal is to expand its reach to companies of all sizes.

Kafie explains that these types of brands are often the most interested in reaching a wide demographic of potential customers, making them prime candidates for a platform like Noise. By deploying what he describes as a small army of everyday advocates, brands achieve an unprecedented level of content diversity and organic reach at a fraction of the cost required by traditional marketing playbooks.

The foundational idea for Noise emerged directly from the founders’ attempts to scale Playbite. While trying to figure out creative marketing strategies on a startup budget, the team experimented with recruiting their own gamers and teaching them how to produce social media content that promoted the app. They started small, working with five, then ten, 25, and eventually 100 people. Before long, app installs began skyrocketing as this grassroots network posted engaging daily content across platforms like TikTok, focusing specifically on mobile games and the Playbite app.

Crucially, Kafie points out that this organic expansion happened at a fraction of the cost of traditional playbooks because they were training everyday people to become content creators from scratch. Had they approached established creators with large existing followings and high clout, the rates would have been completely cost-prohibitive for a scrappy startup budget. That realization ultimately led to the creation of Noise.

With the newly acquired capital, Noise is actively expanding its product capabilities and scaling its workforce. Alongside the funding announcement, the company recently launched its Organic-to-Ads program. This new offering allows brands to take the specific videos produced by Noise creators and deploy them as paid advertisements across Meta and TikTok, supplementing the organic posts published directly by the creators. While creators continue to publish content to their own channels, brands can now put behind-the-scenes paid advertising spend behind those same creative assets to maximize their audience reach.

When asked whether the platform’s model risks paying creators less than they might command independently, Kafie pushed back against the notion. He clarified that brands explicitly set their own rates for campaigns, and creators retain the autonomy to accept or decline offers based on their preferences. He also reiterated that the platform’s core specialization lies in working with everyday people and systematically transforming them into brand-new creators.

In today’s digital landscape, breaking into the influencer space has become increasingly difficult due to the high barriers of entry, intense competition, and the significant investment of time and money required to build an audience from scratch. Kafie believes Noise offers a viable pathway around these systemic stresses.

When users first join the application, they complete integrated Noise creator training modules designed to teach them the fundamentals of producing effective content for commercial brands. Initial access is typically restricted to specific campaigns tailored for beginners. However, as creators complete additional training modules and successfully deliver on past assignments, they unlock higher-paid opportunities within the ecosystem.

By democratizing the concept of becoming a content creator to literally anyone with a smartphone, the company aims to achieve a dual objective. It successfully drives down acquisition and content costs for brands while simultaneously empowering millions of everyday individuals to earn their very first dollar on the internet.