Jeffrey Katzenberg, former CEO of DreamWorks and co-founder of the company, has co-led a $15.5 million Series A funding round for Creatify, a startup focused on AI-powered video advertisements. Through his venture fund, WndrCo, Katzenberg joins a wave of investors betting heavily on technology designed to transform digital marketing.
Creatify has developed AdMax, a platform utilizing artificial intelligence to rapidly produce numerous video ads specifically tailored for social media campaigns. The technology analyzes successful video content from platforms like TikTok and Instagram, extracting insights from top-performing posts to shape and optimize its advertising outputs.
The shift toward AI-driven ad creation is gaining significant momentum within the tech industry. Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has openly discussed ambitious plans to automate the entirety of the company’s advertising process. He envisions an AI-powered system capable of testing extensive numbers of ad variations simultaneously across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.
However, despite industry enthusiasm, past experience shows that high-profile investments are not guaranteed successes. Katzenberg, though well-established in the entertainment industry since before DVDs existed, experienced a major failure with Quibi, a short-form streaming platform he founded. Quibi raised $1.75 billion yet collapsed just six months after launch.
