Noise Wants to Help Everyday People Become Paid Creators
A new startup called Noise is looking to change how people become content creators by allowing everyday smartphone users to participate in paid brand campaigns, regardless of how many followers they have.
The marketing platform connects brands with ordinary users who can create content for campaigns on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Instead of requiring creators to have large audiences, Noise allows anyone with a smartphone to participate.
The company announced a $5.5 million seed funding round on September 16, bringing its total funding raised to $7.2 million. The round was led by Capital Midwest, M25 and Grishin Robotics, with participation from Capitalize VC and individual operators from companies including DoorDash.
How Noise’s Creator Model Works
Noise is designed around a simple concept: brands provide campaign briefs and budgets through the platform, while creators choose campaigns they want to participate in.
Creators can then produce content and publish it on their preferred social platforms. Rather than receiving a traditional flat influencer fee, Noise pays creators based on the number of views their content generates.
The model could allow people with relatively small or even nonexistent followings to earn money from content that reaches an audience.
For brands, Noise handles much of the process involved in finding creators, organizing campaigns and processing payments.
Anyone With a Smartphone Can Participate
One of the company’s main ideas is to broaden the definition of who can become a content creator.
Traditional influencer marketing often focuses on people who have already built large audiences. Noise is instead targeting people who may have strong connections with particular communities but do not necessarily have tens of thousands of followers.
According to TechCrunch, users can download the app and participate regardless of their follower count.
The company believes this could give brands access to a much wider variety of voices and content styles.
Brands Can Reach Thousands of Creators
Noise is also positioning itself as an alternative to the operational challenges associated with traditional influencer campaigns.
Instead of brands individually searching for creators, negotiating deals and managing payments, the platform allows companies to submit campaign requirements and reach large numbers of participating creators.
That could make it possible for a single campaign to run across thousands of content creators simultaneously.
For brands, the attraction is the potential to generate a larger volume of content and reach different audiences without managing every creator relationship manually.
Startup Emerges From Playbite Experience
Noise’s founders developed the idea from their experience at Playbite, where they experimented with different approaches to social media marketing.
The team initially tried recruiting small groups of people to create promotional content before expanding the approach.
The experience eventually led to the idea of making creator participation accessible to a much larger audience.
The company’s broader goal is to help more people earn their first income online through content creation while giving brands another way to reach potential customers.
The Creator Economy Continues to Expand
Noise is entering a growing creator economy in which more people are looking for ways to turn their social media activity and content skills into income.
TechCrunch reported that 57% of young people and slightly more than 40% of U.S. adults are interested in participating in the creator economy.
The company joins other creator-focused businesses, including Billo and JoinBrands, that are developing infrastructure around brand-content partnerships.
Whether Noise can successfully turn everyday social media users into a large-scale creator workforce remains to be seen, but its model reflects a broader shift toward making online content creation more accessible beyond established influencers.
