Motion raises $6M to help creative teams quantify their impact

I’m very excited to announce that Motion has raised $6M in seed funding led by Headline, with participation from Sugar Capital, Abstract Ventures, Habitat Partners (Red Antler), Long Ecommerce Ventures, SuperAngel.Fund (Ben Zises) and Mana Ventures.

The bar for engaging creative (that converts) has never been higher. Ecommerce has matured, social feeds have become crowded and younger generations of consumers reject content that feels like an ad.

Creative teams have a tricky job. Intuition alone will only take them so far. They need to understand exactly what’s working and what’s not e.g. which videos have the best hook rates, hold rates, conversion rates, etc. They need to monitor performance metrics to build a feedback loop into the next round of iterations.

Like other disciplines before it, creative is becoming a data-driven game that runs on sprint cycles (hypothesis > test > iterate). But creative teams face a number of challenges in adopting this workflow today:

1. Creative teams don’t have direct access to performance data
2. Existing analytics solutions are terrible for analyzing visual content
3. Data analysis skills don’t come naturally to designers

That’s where Motion comes in. Our Creative Analytics platform was built from the ground up with creative teams in mind. We understand the art and the science of the modern creative workflow and we baked that perspective into our product.

Sifting through a spreadsheet full of ad references like “Video_Ad_UGC_Black_Friday_V5” just doesn’t cut it for visual assets. It’s important to see the content, play the videos and share insights with teammates. It needs to be creative-friendly.

Motion has quickly become a central part of the creative workflow for hundreds for leading brands and agencies like: Vuori, Hexclad, Ridge, Caraway, Jones Road Beauty, Wpromote, Tinuiti and many more.

Over the last 12 months, Motion customers have analyzed $1B+ in media spend, shared 100K+ creative reports and collaborated with 4,000+ teammates.

Despite their immense impact, creative teams often lack influence at the leadership level. Creative work is treated as a support function to other teams. But as creative leaders learn to tie their team’s work to revenue, we’re beginning to see the commercialization of the creative department. Motion aims to help creative teams quantify the impact of their work.

This new funding means that we’ll invest in expanding our product offering to streamline the entire Creative Strategy workflow. We have a massive roadmap ahead. Can’t wait to show you what we’re building!

Super grateful to Taylor Brandt, Nikki Farb and the team at Headline for seeing the vision so quickly. Learn more about why they decided to invest here.