Smartly.io
Automates social ads across platforms
Creative Director - Brand & Content
+ Annual performance bonus + Stock options + Equity grants
About the job
- Experience leading and developing creative teams, including direct people management responsibilities.
- Strong background in graphic design, brand design, visual communication, or a related creative discipline.
- Experience as a conceptual Art Director, with a portfolio demonstrating strong campaign thinking and creative problem-solving.
- Ability to translate strategy, messaging, and business goals into engaging creative concepts and visual storytelling.
- Strong design craft and a deep understanding of typography, layout, visual systems, and brand identity.
- Experience partnering with cross-functional stakeholders and navigating feedback from multiple audiences.
- Ability to balance creative excellence with practical business outcomes.
- Lead, coach, and develop a team of designers, creating an environment where people can do their best work and grow their careers.
- Develop creative concepts and campaigns that strengthen Smartly's brand and connect with target audiences.
- Provide clear creative direction and feedback throughout the creative process, from brief through final execution.
- Partner with Brand, Content, Product Marketing, Communications, and other stakeholders to translate business objectives into compelling creative solutions.
- Elevate the quality, consistency, and effectiveness of Smartly's visual identity across all channels and touchpoints.
- Review and approve creative work, ensuring it meets strategic objectives, brand standards, and quality expectations.
- Help establish and refine creative processes, workflows, and ways of working that enable the team to scale its impact.
- Stay current on design, advertising, and cultural trends, bringing fresh thinking and new approaches to the team's work.
- Experience working with consumer-facing brands or B2C marketing is preferred, but not required.
- Experience working in technology, SaaS, or high-growth environments is a plus.
- Excellent communication, presentation, and collaboration skills.
About the company
Smartly.io automates social media advertising for brands by handling media buying, creative production, and performance optimization across platforms like Facebook and Instagram. It combines software that automates campaign tasks with a managed services team that provides expert guidance to help brands scale efficiently and profitably. Its Creative Services unit designs, produces, and continually tests ad creatives to improve engagement and return on ad spend (ROAS). The goal is to help brands adapt to changing social media behavior and achieve scalable, profitable advertising across multiple platforms.
Company Size
1,001-5,000
Company Stage
Acquired
Total Funding
$2.8M
Headquarters
Helsinki, Finland
Founded
2013
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Simplify's Take
What believers are saying
- Smartly completed INCRMNTAL acquisition on May 7, 2026, strengthening causal measurement.
- June 2026 Horizon Media partnership delivered nearly doubled engagement and 35% lower cost.
- September 2026 ADVANCE drew 750 leaders, signaling strong enterprise demand and pipeline.
What critics are saying
- Meta, Google, and TikTok own the ad budgets Smartly intermediates every quarter.
- Reddit and LinkedIn can copy Smartly features and commoditize workflows by 2027.
- If Synapse or INCRMNTAL underperform, Smartly becomes a thin services wrapper.
What makes Smartly.io unique
- Smartly's June 2026 Synapse unifies creative, media, and measurement orchestration.
- Reddit named Smartly its first API partner for Max campaigns in September 2026.
- LinkedIn and Roku integrations extend Smartly across B2B video and CTV.
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Benefits
Unlimited Paid Time Off
Paid Holidays
Paid Sick Leave
Health Insurance
Mental Health Support
401(k) Retirement Plan
401(k) Company Match
Company Equity
Life Insurance
Disability Insurance
Growth & Insights and Company News
6 month growth
↑ 0%1 year growth
↑ 0%2 year growth
↑ 0%Smartly partners with LinkedIn to scale creative and video for B2B. Search. LinkedIn's professional audience insights combined with Smartly's AI-powered creative and performance intelligence give marketers the speed and intelligence to deliver more relevant creative across every stage of the B2B buying journey. Smartly, the AI-powered advertising technology company transforming ad experiences for brands and their consumers, today announced a new integration bringing LinkedIn Ads into its unified advertising platform, expanding the channels marketers can manage with Smartly. The integration will help marketers personalize creative for professional audiences, accelerate video production and use audience and performance intelligence to continuously improve advertising outcomes. "Our collaboration with LinkedIn extends Smartly's creative and intelligence capabilities to one of the most important environments for B2B marketers," said Laura Desmond, CEO, Smartly. "When you're engaging a complex buying group, one message or one piece of creative isn't enough. Smartly makes it possible to turn audience intelligence into relevant creative at scale, learn from performance, and continuously make the next ad better. Smartly's integration with LinkedIn brings that advantage to B2B marketers." The integration brings Smartly's creative and performance capabilities to LinkedIn at a time when B2B marketers are navigating increasingly complex buying journeys. Purchase decisions often involve multiple stakeholders with different priorities, raising the need for creative that speaks to distinct audiences, buying stages and markets. By combining LinkedIn's professional audience with Smartly's creative automation and intelligence, marketers can turn a deeper understanding of who they are reaching into more relevant advertising and continuously improve what performs. For B2B marketers, this brings Smartly's AI-powered creative and campaign intelligence capabilities to LinkedIn, helping teams: * Make B2B creative more intelligent: Combine audience insights from LinkedIn's professional network with Smartly's creative intelligence to create and deliver more relevant creative across the buying journey. * Scale video for LinkedIn: Use AI-powered automation to produce, version and iterate video at scale, turning existing creative into more relevant video assets for LinkedIn faster. * Turn performance signals into action: Bring campaign and creative insights into a continuous intelligence loop that uses AI to surface what's working, identify opportunities to optimize and inform smarter creative and campaign decisions on LinkedIn.
Reddit opens its ai-powered Max campaigns to every advertiser. Reddit is asking advertisers to make a familiar bargain: bring the objective, budget and creative, then let the platform decide how to turn them into results. The company has made Reddit Max campaigns available to every advertiser, taking its most automated campaign type out of limited availability. Discover more Launch Ad Campaigns advertising Hire Social Agencies Max uses artificial intelligence to manage targeting, creative selection, placements, bidding and budget allocation. Reddit says early testing produced a 17% lower cost per acquisition and more than 27% additional conversions compared with advertisers' standard campaigns. But the expansion is about more than giving additional advertisers access. Reddit is also adding asset groups, support through its advertising API and an integration with Smartly. Together, those additions turn Max from a simplified campaign option into something agencies and larger advertisers can realistically manage at scale. What changed since Reddit Max entered beta. When WeRSM first covered Reddit Max, the product was positioned as a faster way to build traffic and conversion campaigns. Advertisers could provide multiple headlines, images and calls to action, then allow Reddit's system to determine which combination should appear for each impression. That basic proposition remains unchanged. What has changed is the campaign infrastructure surrounding it. Advertisers can now create and manage Max campaigns through Reddit's advertising API. Smartly has become the first third-party platform to support the format, allowing its customers to build and scale campaigns without relying exclusively on Reddit Ads Manager. Reddit is also introducing asset groups. These allow advertisers to organize several creative sets inside a single Max campaign. A retailer could create one asset group for footwear and another for accessories. Each group can have its own headlines, media, destination URL and reporting while sharing the same wider campaign structure. That makes Max considerably more useful for brands managing multiple product lines, offers or customer needs. What advertisers still control. A Max campaign does not ask advertisers to surrender every decision. The advertiser still chooses the campaign objective, destination URL, budget, schedule and bid strategy. Location, device targeting, custom audience exclusions and brand-safety settings can also remain firm restrictions. Advertisers then provide the system with a selection of headlines, images, videos and calls to action. Reddit Max decides which assets to combine, where to place the resulting ad, which audiences should receive it and how the available budget should be distributed. Reddit can also suggest headlines using language associated with conversations on the platform, generate thumbnails and crop creative for different placements. The system is therefore automating execution, but it still depends on the advertiser to define the commercial goal, supply the raw creative material and establish the boundaries it must respect. The most important tradeoff appears inside audience targeting. Advertisers can suggest communities, keywords, interests, demographics and custom audiences. However, these inputs guide the system rather than strictly limiting where the campaign can run. If an advertiser identifies several running communities, Reddit Max can use that information as a starting signal. It can also move beyond those communities if its models predict that another audience is more likely to produce the desired result. That flexibility is designed to unlock conversions advertisers might otherwise miss. It also means marketers lose some of the certainty that comes from selecting exactly where their advertising should appear. Location, audience exclusions and brand-safety restrictions can still act as hard boundaries. Community and keyword selections generally cannot. For performance marketers, that may be an acceptable exchange. For advertisers whose strategy depends on reaching a specific cultural context, the distinction deserves close attention. Reddit is trying to open the black box. Reddit is positioning reporting as one of the defining differences between Max and other automated campaign products. Its Top Audience Personas reporting can show the types of people who responded to a campaign, alongside their interests and relevant communities. Advertisers can also inspect performance by placement, device and location. Asset reporting reveals which individual elements and creative combinations delivered results. That matters because automated campaigns often leave marketers knowing that something worked without clearly explaining who responded or which creative decision made the difference. Reddit's approach can potentially turn campaign delivery into audience research. A brand may discover an unexpected community, persona or creative combination that can inform its next campaign. This does not make Max completely transparent. Advertisers are still relying on Reddit's models to determine delivery, and visibility after a campaign is not the same as control before it. But useful post-campaign insight is better than a single performance score with no explanation attached. Reddit's performance claims need context. Reddit says Max campaigns produced a 17% lower cost per acquisition and more than 27% additional conversions during testing. Those numbers are encouraging, but the footnote matters. The results are based on 17 split tests conducted between June and August 2025. Each test compared Max with a standard campaign over 21 days. That is a more credible comparison than collecting unrelated advertiser success stories, but it is still a relatively small group of tests managed and reported by Reddit. The company does not disclose the full range of industries, budgets or results behind the average. Advertisers should therefore treat the figures as a reason to test Max, not as a guaranteed benchmark. The relevant question is not whether Reddit's average advertiser improved. It is whether Max can outperform a brand's existing campaign structure while maintaining conversion quality, revenue and customer value. How marketers should test Reddit Max. The best way to approach Max is as a controlled performance experiment. Marketers should: * Connect the Reddit Pixel and Conversions API before increasing spend. The system needs reliable conversion signals to learn what a valuable result looks like. * Provide genuinely different creative options. Fifteen minor headline variations will give the system less to learn from than several distinct messages, formats and value propositions. * Use asset groups to separate product lines, offers or use cases that lead to different landing pages. * Establish location, audience exclusions and brand-safety controls before launch. * Compare Max with a standard campaign using similar creative, offers, attribution settings and campaign periods. * Measure qualified conversions, revenue and customer value alongside clicks, conversion volume and cost per acquisition. * Review the communities and audience personas discovered by the system. These insights may be as useful as the immediate performance result. Reddit's recently expanded split-testing tools give marketers a particularly relevant way to compare Max against their existing approach without relying on impressions or instinct. Every advertising platform is selling the machine. Reddit Max arrives as automation becomes standard across digital advertising. The major platforms increasingly want advertisers to supply a goal, a collection of creative assets and a budget, then trust their systems to handle the rest. As those products begin to resemble one another, the competitive question becomes less about who offers automation and more about what proprietary signals inform it. Reddit's answer is Community Intelligence: the interests, language, questions and purchasing conversations taking place across its communities. That context could give Max a meaningful advantage. Someone discussing the best running shoes for flat feet is expressing a different kind of intent from someone who merely watched a fitness video. But community intelligence cannot rescue generic creative. If Max expands a campaign beyond the audiences originally suggested, the advertisement still needs to make sense to the person receiving it. Automation increases the importance of strong positioning and adaptable creative because advertisers have less certainty about the exact context in which each impression will appear. Reddit Max may reduce the number of campaign decisions marketers need to make manually. It does not eliminate the need to understand how Reddit behaves. The system can identify where an advertiser might find results. The brand still has to give those communities a reason to care.
Smartly's ADVANCE to Explore AI's Impact on Advertising. Published on: Sep 3, 2026 Smartly is bringing its ADVANCE industry event back to New York City on September 29, with music producer Timbaland set to join Smartly CEO Laura Desmond for a mainstage discussion on creativity, originality and artificial intelligence in advertising. The event at Spring Studios is expected to bring together more than 750 senior leaders from brands, agencies and technology platforms, according to Smartly. The agenda spans creative AI, commerce AI, media, agency transformation and the convergence of performance and brand marketing. Timbaland's participation puts the creative implications of generative AI at the center of the event. His discussion with Desmond is expected to examine how marketers can preserve distinctive creative perspectives as AI makes content production and experimentation more accessible. The broader agenda reflects a significant shift underway across advertising technology. Smartly's platform combines creative production, media management and intelligence, positioning AI as an orchestration layer across campaign workflows rather than simply a tool for generating advertising assets. Speakers listed for ADVANCE include executives from Accenture Song, DoorDash, Google, Horizon Media, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, The New York Times, WPP, Wpromote and YouTube. Their participation highlights how AI-driven advertising is becoming a cross-platform issue involving creative development, media buying, commerce and consumer discovery. The timing also aligns with broader industry investment in AI. The Interactive Advertising Bureau's 2026 outlook forecasts U.S. advertising spending to grow 9.5% year over year, while five of the six top buyer priorities identified in its research are centered on AI. Two-thirds of surveyed buyers are specifically focused on agentic AI for advertising buying and campaign execution. That transition creates a more complicated challenge for marketers. Greater automation can accelerate production and optimization, but it also raises questions about creative differentiation, brand consistency, measurement and consumer trust. IAB research published in January found that 82% of advertising executives believed Gen Z and millennial consumers feel positive about AI-generated advertising, compared with 45% of consumers who actually reported positive sentiment. The gap suggests that increasing AI adoption does not necessarily translate into greater consumer acceptance. ADVANCE's emphasis on human creativity alongside AI therefore reflects a broader industry debate: whether advertising organizations should use AI primarily to increase production efficiency or as a way to redesign how creative, media and commerce decisions are made. Market landscape. AI is moving from experimentation toward operational infrastructure across advertising. IAB's 2026 research shows buyers increasingly prioritizing agentic AI, cross-platform measurement and performance optimization. At the same time, the industry's growing dependence on automated creative systems introduces new challenges around quality and authenticity. IAB has developed an AI transparency and disclosure framework as marketers increasingly use generative AI in advertising production. Strategic outlook. Smartly's ADVANCE reflects the convergence of creative technology, advertising media and commerce infrastructure. The event's agenda suggests that the next phase of AI adoption will focus less on isolated content-generation tools and more on integrated systems capable of connecting creative decisions with media performance. For agencies and brands, the strategic question will be how to scale AI-enabled production without making advertising less distinctive. Human judgment, brand voice and measurement are likely to remain important differentiators as automated campaign execution expands. Top insights. * Smartly's ADVANCE takes place September 29 at Spring Studios in New York City. * Timbaland will discuss creativity and originality in the AI era with Smartly CEO Laura Desmond. * More than 750 industry leaders are expected, according to Smartly. * IAB forecasts 9.5% U.S. ad-spend growth in 2026. * Two-thirds of surveyed buyers are focused on agentic AI for ad buying and campaign execution. * Consumer attitudes toward AI-generated advertising remain less positive than advertiser expectations.
Smartly's ADVANCE returns to New York Sept. 29 at Spring Studios. * 1 hr ago Smartly's flagship event, ADVANCE, returns to New York City on Sept. 29, 2026, at Spring Studios. The event will bring together more than 750 senior marketing and advertising leaders from brands, agencies and leading technology platforms. As AI reshapes how brands are built and consumers discover products, creativity, media, and intelligence are becoming one connected system. ADVANCE will explore what this shift means for marketers, their teams, and the next generation of brand and business growth. The agenda features leaders from across the marketing ecosystem, including Accenture Song, DoorDash, Google, Horizon Media, Meta, NBCUniversal, The New York Times, Pinterest, Reddit, TikTok, WPP, Wpromote and YouTube, alongside opening remarks from Smartly CEO Laura Desmond. Additional speakers and special guests will be announced in the coming weeks. Closing the day, NBA Champion and New York Knicks forward Josh Hart will join Smartly CEO Laura Desmond in conversation alongside Matthew Hillman, CEO of PATH Talent. Together, Hart and Hillman co-host The Roommates Show, one of sports' fastest-growing podcasts. Drawing on their experience building loyal communities on and off the court, they'll explore what it takes to create authentic cultural relevance, build enduring brands and turn defining moments into lasting impact. "As access to AI becomes universal, competitive advantage shifts somewhere new," said Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly. "It will belong to the companies and marketing leaders who turn abundant data into intelligence that compounds. Making every decision, campaign, creative asset, and every outcome better than the last. ADVANCE is where the conversation takes place, where the connections are made, and where marketers uncover their competitive advantage in the intelligence era." Complementing the mainstage program, ADVANCE features two tracks: Creative AI and Commerce AI. The Creative AI track explores how brands can build enduring creative systems in the age of AI, while the Commerce AI track explores how marketers are driving growth through cross-channel orchestration, measurement and responsible automation. Across both tracks, conversations will explore the evolving role of marketing teams, platform strategy, trust, authenticity and the practical application of AI. ADVANCE is made possible with support from partners including Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Roku, Snapchat and TikTok, whose collaboration helps shape programming and experiences throughout the event. Registration is now open. Qualified attendees from brands and advertising organizations may be eligible for complimentary admission. About Smartly Smartly is the AI-powered advertising technology company ranked as the leader in The Forrester Wave(TM): Creative Advertising Technologies. Its platform unifies creative and media to produce intelligent creative, dynamic, data-driven image and video assets optimized for seamless activation across channels. Brands manage, optimize, and scale high-performance campaigns in one place, achieving PwC-validated results, including a 5.5x return on ad spend (ROAS) and 42 minutes saved every hour. True North Radio Network support 800+ brands and manage over $7 billion in ad spend globally. With strategic partnerships across major media platforms, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, Spotify, and TikTok, True North Radio Network help Fortune 500 companies deliver relevant advertising at speed and scale. Backed by deep media expertise and best-in-class customer support, True North Radio Network empower brands to maximize performance and drive real business outcomes. Visit Smartly.io to learn more. Media gallery
Smartly's ADVANCE returns to New York Sept. 29 at Spring Studios. Smartly's flagship event will convene more than 750 senior leaders from brands, agencies and technology platforms to explore how AI, creative, commerce and intelligence are converging to reshape modern marketing NEW YORK - August 6, 2026 - Smartly's flagship event, ADVANCE, returns to New York City on Sept. 29, 2026, at Spring Studios. The event will bring together more than 750 senior marketing and advertising leaders from brands, agencies and leading technology platforms. As AI reshapes how brands are built and consumers discover products, creativity, media, and intelligence are becoming one connected system. ADVANCE will explore what this shift means for marketers, their teams, and the next generation of brand and business growth. The agenda features leaders from across the marketing ecosystem, including Accenture Song, DoorDash, Google, Horizon Media, Meta, NBCUniversal, The New York Times, Pinterest, Reddit, TikTok, WPP, Wpromote and YouTube, alongside opening remarks from Smartly CEO Laura Desmond. Additional speakers and special guests will be announced in the coming weeks. Closing the day, NBA Champion and New York Knicks forward Josh Hart will join Smartly CEO Laura Desmond in conversation alongside Matthew Hillman, CEO of PATH Talent. Together, Hart and Hillman co-host The Roommates Show, one of sports' fastest-growing podcasts. Drawing on their experience building loyal communities on and off the court, they'll explore what it takes to create authentic cultural relevance, build enduring brands and turn defining moments into lasting impact. "As access to AI becomes universal, competitive advantage shifts somewhere new," said Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly. "It will belong to the companies and marketing leaders who turn abundant data into intelligence that compounds. Making every decision, campaign, creative asset, and every outcome better than the last. ADVANCE is where the conversation takes place, where the connections are made, and where marketers uncover their competitive advantage in the intelligence era." Complementing the mainstage program, ADVANCE features two tracks: Creative AI and Commerce AI. The Creative AI track explores how brands can build enduring creative systems in the age of AI, while the Commerce AI track explores how marketers are driving growth through cross-channel orchestration, measurement and responsible automation. Across both tracks, conversations will explore the evolving role of marketing teams, platform strategy, trust, authenticity and the practical application of AI. ADVANCE is made possible with support from partners including Google, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Roku, Snapchat and TikTok, whose collaboration helps shape programming and experiences throughout the event. Registration is now open. Qualified attendees from brands and advertising organizations may be eligible for complimentary admission. About Smartly Smartly is the AI-powered advertising technology company ranked as the leader in The Forrester Wave(TM): Creative Advertising Technologies. Its platform unifies creative and media to produce intelligent creative, dynamic, data-driven image and video assets optimized for seamless activation across channels. Brands manage, optimize, and scale high-performance campaigns in one place, achieving PwC-validated results, including a 5.5x return on ad spend (ROAS) and 42 minutes saved every hour. Smartly support 800+ brands and manage over $7 billion in ad spend globally. With strategic partnerships across major media platforms, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Pinterest, Reddit, Snap, Spotify, and TikTok, Smartly help Fortune 500 companies deliver relevant advertising at speed and scale. Backed by deep media expertise and best-in-class customer support, Smartly empower brands to maximize performance and drive real business outcomes. Visit Smartly.io to learn more. Media Contact Joseph J. Nuñez Senior Director, Global Communications Get in touch. Have a question? Reach out to its communications team. Joseph Nuñez [email protected] [email protected]