Pencil
Enterprise creative governance, with a $14 door left open
Pencil is a generative AI advertising creative platform that orchestrates models from OpenAI, Google, Adobe, Runway, and Bria behind one editor to produce ad text, images, and video, scores creative in real time, and pushes finished ads toward Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google Display, DV360, and LinkedIn; it is owned by The Brandtech Group and sells self-serve plans metered by AI generations at $14 and $55 a month alongside an enterprise Pro tier with data ringfencing, a no-train clause, and IP indemnification.
Overview
Pencil is two products wearing one name, and knowing which one you are buying is the whole decision. The self-serve tiers are a metered creative generator: fifty generations a month for $14, two hundred and fifty for $55, with a drag-and-drop editor, real-time AI scoring, sharing and approval tools, and a results dashboard. The Pro tier is something else entirely, an enterprise creative operating system sold with a dedicated customer success manager, entity and role-based access controls, data ringfencing, managed fine-tuning, and an enterprise terms of service carrying IP assignment, a no-train clause, and indemnification.
The company's public positioning is aimed squarely at the second audience. The homepage talks about enterprise procurement, SOC 2 Type II, regional data compliance across the EU, US, and APAC, brand safety guardrails, and full IP indemnification, and its case studies cite global brands scaling creative across twenty-four markets at once. The $14 plan exists as a genuine self-serve path, and a small business can use it productively, but nobody should mistake it for where the product's center of gravity sits.
What Pencil does differently from other generators is orchestrate rather than own its models. It aggregates OpenAI, Google, Adobe, Runway, and Bria behind one interface, with text-to-video handled through Google's Veo, and the pitch is that you avoid vendor lock-in and inherit new models as they launch. That is a defensible architectural position and it has a practical consequence for buyers: the quality ceiling of Pencil's output moves with the frontier rather than with one company's internal model roadmap.
It does creative production, not campaign optimization. Pencil integrates with seven ad platforms for distribution and shows a results dashboard, but it does not manage bids, budgets, or targeting on any of them. Founded in 2018 by Will Hanschell, Sumukh Avadhani, and James Chadwick in Singapore, it raised roughly $4.1 million from Wavemaker Partners and Surge before The Brandtech Group acquired it in June 2023, and it now sits alongside Brandtech's other AI marketing assets.
Best for
Marketing organizations that produce advertising creative at scale across multiple markets and need governance around generative AI, particularly those whose legal teams require IP indemnification, a no-train clause, and data ringfencing; and, on the self-serve side, small teams who want a metered generator with a real editor and broad platform distribution for $14 to $55 a month.
Not the right fit for
- Anyone wanting campaign optimization; Pencil generates and distributes creative and does not manage bids, budgets, or targeting on any connected platform.
- High-volume small teams on a budget, because generations are metered, expire monthly with no rollover, and cannot be exceeded, so a productive week on Core simply stops.
- Buyers who want the enterprise capabilities at a published price; data ringfencing, IP indemnification, bulk feed generation, and custom models are all Pro-tier and quoted.
- Small businesses drawn in by the $14 headline who then find the roadmap, the case studies, and the support model all pointed at global brands.
- Teams whose bottleneck is knowing what to make rather than making it; Pencil scores creative but does not do competitive ad research or account-level creative analytics.
How it works
- 1
You work in a workspace, which is Pencil's organizing unit. Core allows one workspace and Growth allows unlimited, which is the practical difference between a single brand and an agency or multi-brand setup on the self-serve tiers.
- 2
You generate. AI agents produce ad text, images, and video against your brief and brand context, drawing on whichever underlying model suits the task, with text-to-video routed through Google's Veo. Every interaction with a model consumes a generation credit, including each new format produced by AI Auto Resize, which is the counting rule that decides which plan you actually need.
- 3
You refine and review. A drag-and-drop editor allows direct manipulation rather than regeneration, real-time AI insights and scores flag likely performance before anything runs, and built-in sharing and approval tools carry the creative through review without exporting files into an email chain.
- 4
You distribute and measure. Integrations cover Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google Display, DV360, and LinkedIn on every plan, and a results dashboard reports back on what ran. Pro adds bulk generation driven by feeds across audiences, markets, and products, AI video cutdowns, storyboarding, custom integrations, managed fine-tuning, and the enterprise governance wrapper.
Feature breakdown
32 features in 5 modulesGeneration and model orchestration
The architectural choice that defines the product.- Multi-model orchestration
- Aggregates models from OpenAI, Google, Adobe, Runway, and Bria behind one interface, so output quality tracks the frontier rather than one vendor's internal roadmap and you are not locked to a single provider.
- Text generation
- Ad copy, headlines, and body text produced by AI agents against your brief and brand context.
- Text-to-image generation
- Image generation inside the same workflow as copy and video, rather than as a separate tool.
- Text-to-video generation
- Video ad generation routed through Google's Veo, which is one of the more capable video models available to a $14 subscription.
- AI product photography
- Generated product imagery for teams without a photo shoot budget.
- AI Auto Resize
- Generates additional format variations automatically. Worth noting for budgeting: each new format costs a generation credit, so resizing a concept into ten placements consumes ten of your monthly allowance.
- AI video cutdowns
- Pro tier only. Produces shorter edits from longer video assets, which is how a single hero film becomes a full paid social set.
- Concepting and storyboarding
- Also Pro only. Moves the tool upstream from asset production into the planning stage of a campaign.
Editing, review, and scoring
What happens between generation and launch.- Drag-and-drop editor
- Direct manipulation of generated creative rather than regenerating and hoping, which is the difference between a tool and a slot machine.
- Real-time AI insights and scores
- Creative is scored as you build rather than after the fact. Like every pre-launch score in this category, treat it as a filter for weak variants and not as a prediction about your audience.
- Sharing and approval tools
- Review and sign-off run inside the platform on every plan including Core, which is unusual at $14.
- Results dashboard
- Reports on how distributed creative performed. This is reporting, not optimization; nothing in Pencil changes a campaign setting based on what the dashboard shows.
- Insights Agent
- Built with consumer intelligence data from GWI, bringing audience research into the creative decision rather than leaving it to instinct.
Distribution and platform coverage
Which networks the creative can actually reach, and on which plans.- Meta distribution
- Facebook and Instagram, included on every plan including Core.
- TikTok distribution
- Available on every plan, which is more generous than most tools at this price gate.
- YouTube distribution
- Included across plans, pairing with the video generation capability.
- Google Display and DV360
- Both supported, which extends coverage into programmatic display and is unusual for a creative tool aimed partly at small teams.
- LinkedIn distribution
- Included on all plans, giving B2B advertisers a path that most paid social creative tools do not offer.
- Custom integrations
- Pro only. Connections into first-party and third-party marketing stacks beyond the standard seven platforms.
Governance, security, and enterprise controls
The reason large organizations buy this rather than a cheaper generator.- Brand safety guardrails
- Enforces brand standards at scale so volume generation does not require volume policing.
- No-train policy
- Customer data is not used to train models, contractually enforced in the Pro tier's enterprise terms rather than stated as a preference.
- IP assignment and indemnification
- Pro's enterprise terms carry IP assignment and indemnification, which is the specific clause that gets generative AI approved by a corporate legal team and is absent from the standard self-serve terms.
- Data ringfencing
- Pro enforces separation of customer data, with access revoked when the subscription ends.
- Entity and role-based access controls
- Pro only. Permissions scoped by entity and role for organizations running many brands and markets in one account.
- SOC 2 Type II and regional compliance
- Independently audited SOC 2 Type II with regional data compliance across the EU, US, and APAC.
- AI governance controls and custom model selection
- Pro customers can constrain which models are used and how, which matters where model provenance is itself a compliance question.
Plans, workspaces, and metering
The commercial mechanics, which are the most important thing to model.- Generation metering
- Every interaction with an AI model consumes a generation. Fifty per month on Core, two hundred and fifty on Growth, unlimited on Pro under committed consumption pricing.
- No rollover and a hard cap
- Unused generations expire monthly and the allocation cannot be exceeded on self-serve plans. Running out means stopping until the next cycle, not paying an overage.
- Workspaces
- One workspace on Core and unlimited on Growth, which is the real reason an agency or multi-brand team pays $55 rather than $14.
- Unlimited users, brands, and markets on Pro
- Pro removes every structural limit and moves to committed consumption pricing with overage charges billed on actual usage.
- Roadmap access on Growth
- Growth includes direct access to the product team and roadmap, which is a small but genuine perk at $55.
- Managed services on Pro
- A dedicated customer success manager, managed pilots, creative services, and a full generative AI training curriculum.
Use cases
4 documentedGlobal brand's in-house creative operations team
Generative AI is banned by legal until someone can produce an indemnification clause, a no-train guarantee, and evidence of data separation.
Pro's enterprise terms carry IP assignment, a no-train clause, and indemnification alongside SOC 2 Type II and regional compliance, which is precisely the package that unblocks the legal review.
Performance marketer at a mid-sized company
Creative for Meta, TikTok, and LinkedIn all comes from different freelancers, arrives inconsistently, and has to be uploaded to each platform by hand.
Growth at $55 a month covers two hundred and fifty generations across text, image, and video with distribution into all seven supported platforms from one place, and unlimited workspaces separate the brands.
Small business testing AI ad creative for the first time
There is no design capability, no video budget, and no appetite for a large commitment before knowing whether AI creative works at all.
Six free ads through the guided experience, then Core at $14 a month, gives a real editor, scoring, and distribution into Meta and TikTok, with the caveat that fifty generations disappear quickly once resizing is counted.
Brand scaling a campaign across many markets
One campaign needs to run across two dozen markets and localizing it manually would take longer than the campaign window.
Pro's bulk generation from feeds across audiences, markets, and products produces the full localized set, with brand safety guardrails and role-based controls keeping quality consistent at that volume.
Pricing
from $14 per month billed monthly, or $11 per month billed annually (Core)Self-serve subscriptions metered by monthly AI generations, plus an enterprise Pro tier on committed consumption pricing. The fee has no relationship to ad spend.
| Plan | Price | Includes |
|---|---|---|
| Core | $14 per month, or $11 billed annually |
Standard terms of service only, with none of the enterprise governance protections. |
| Growth | $55 per month, or $44 billed annually |
Unlimited workspaces is the real upgrade here, not just the higher generation count. |
| Pro | Custom committed consumption, billed monthly on actual usage |
This is the actual product the company sells; the self-serve tiers are the doorway. |
Billing notes
- Pricing is per generation allowance and workspace count, with no relationship to ad spend. At $5,000 of monthly media, Growth at $55 is 1.1 percent; at $25,000 it is 0.2 percent; at $100,000 it is 0.06 percent. Like other creative tools it becomes proportionally cheaper as media grows, which is the opposite of a percentage-of-spend platform.
- The metering rule is the thing to understand before buying. A generation is every interaction with an AI model, and AI Auto Resize costs one credit per new format. Resizing a single concept into ten placements is ten generations, so Core's fifty-per-month allowance covers roughly five concepts fully resized.
- Unused generations do not roll over and the allocation cannot be exceeded on self-serve plans. You do not get charged an overage; you simply stop until the cycle resets, which is a hard stop mid-campaign if you have misjudged.
- Annual billing saves 20 percent, taking Core to $11 and Growth to $44 per month.
- All the governance that makes this product enterprise-viable, the no-train clause, IP indemnification, data ringfencing, and role-based access, sits in Pro's enterprise terms. Self-serve customers are on standard terms of service with none of it.
- Pro's data ringfencing includes access revocation when the subscription ends, which is a precisely documented cancellation behavior on that tier. On self-serve tiers, retention and export of generated assets after cancellation are not documented, so export what you need first. Creative already published into your own ad accounts is unaffected either way.
Value assessment: Core at $14 buys more than the price suggests, a real editor, multi-model generation including Veo video, scoring, approvals, and distribution into seven ad platforms, and it is a reasonable way for a small business to find out whether AI creative helps at all. It is also throttled hard enough that any team producing seriously will exhaust it, which is the design intent. Growth at $55 with unlimited workspaces and two hundred and fifty generations is the sensible self-serve plan. The real value proposition, though, is Pro, and it is not priced in public: enterprises buy Pencil for the indemnification, the no-train clause, and the data ringfencing rather than for the pixels, and those are worth a great deal to an organization whose legal team has otherwise banned generative AI outright.
Strengths & limitations
Strengths
- Multi-model orchestration across OpenAI, Google, Adobe, Runway, and Bria means output quality tracks the frontier and you are not tied to one vendor's model roadmap.
- Distribution to seven ad platforms including LinkedIn, Google Display, and DV360 on every plan, which is broader than most creative tools offer at any price.
- A real drag-and-drop editor plus sharing and approval workflow included at $14, rather than reserved for higher tiers.
- The enterprise governance package is genuinely differentiated: SOC 2 Type II, regional compliance across EU, US, and APAC, a no-train clause, IP assignment and indemnification, and data ringfencing.
- Text-to-video through Google's Veo puts a capable video model behind a subscription that starts at $14 a month.
- Owned by The Brandtech Group since June 2023, which gives it an ad-industry parent and a route into large brand accounts rather than a startup's uncertain runway.
- Pricing on the self-serve tiers is fully published, including the exact metering rule for what counts as a generation, which is more transparent than most credit-based competitors.
Limitations
- It optimizes nothing. Pencil generates and distributes creative and reports on results; it never changes a bid, budget, or target on any connected platform.
- Generations are metered, expire monthly, and cannot be exceeded, so a productive week on Core ends in a hard stop rather than an overage.
- AI Auto Resize consuming a credit per format makes the effective allowance much smaller than the headline number implies.
- Everything that makes Pencil enterprise-grade is Pro-tier and unpublished, so a small buyer gets the generator without the governance.
- The product's public positioning, case studies, and support model are all aimed at large brands, which means self-serve customers are not the audience the roadmap is written for.
- No competitive ad research and no account-level creative analytics, so a team that does not know what to make gets no help deciding.
- Post-cancellation retention and export of generated assets are documented only for Pro, where access is revoked at subscription end; self-serve terms say nothing.
Head-to-head comparisons
4 alternativesPencil vs AdCreative.ai
from $39 per month (Starter)Both are metered AI creative generators with pre-launch scoring, and both start cheap. AdCreative.ai offers more generator variety aimed at small ecommerce, with brand kits and a Meta and Google feedback loop, at $39 to $249. Pencil offers a better editor, broader distribution including LinkedIn and DV360, and an enterprise governance tier AdCreative.ai does not have. For a small Shopify brand, AdCreative.ai; for anything with a legal review over AI output, Pencil.
Full Pencil vs AdCreative.ai comparisonPencil vs The Brief
from $29 per month billed annually (Create, single seat)The Brief has the stronger design surface, with PSD and Figma import, animation timelines, and template depth, and it publishes and serves ads across 25-plus networks from $29 per seat with no generation meter. Pencil has multi-model orchestration and the enterprise governance wrapper. Small and mid-sized teams that want to produce a lot will prefer The Brief's unmetered per-seat model; enterprises needing indemnification will prefer Pencil.
Full Pencil vs The Brief comparisonPencil vs Atria
from $129 per month billed annually (Core), $159 billed monthlyAtria starts from research and analysis of Meta and TikTok creative and generates from what it learns, at $129 a month with five seats. Pencil starts from generation and distributes far more broadly across seven platforms, but knows nothing about what your competitors are running or how your creative is grading against the market. If deciding what to make is the hard part, Atria; if producing and distributing it is, Pencil.
Full Pencil vs Atria comparisonPencil vs Foreplay
from $59 per month (Basic, monthly billing) or $49 per month billed annuallyNot competitors so much as opposite halves. Foreplay is a competitive ad library for research and briefing and produces nothing; Pencil produces and distributes and researches nothing. Teams buying Pencil for volume frequently discover they still need something answering the creative direction question, and Foreplay is the cheap answer to it.
Full Pencil vs Foreplay comparisonImplementation & onboarding
- Setup time
- Under an hour on self-serve. Create a workspace, provide brand context, and generate. Connecting the seven ad platforms for distribution adds an OAuth step per platform.
- Learning curve
- Low to use, moderate to budget. Generating and editing is straightforward; learning to work within a hard generation cap that counts every resize is the actual skill, and most new users hit the wall in their first month.
- Onboarding
- Fully self-serve on Core and Growth, including a free guided experience producing six ads. Pro involves a sales process with managed pilots, a dedicated customer success manager, and a generative AI training curriculum.
- Migration notes
- No documented bulk import of an existing creative library, so migration in is largely manual. On the way out, creative already published to your own ad accounts is unaffected; Pro's data ringfencing explicitly revokes platform access at subscription end, while self-serve retention and export terms are not documented. Export finished assets before cancelling.
Platform, API & security
- Platforms
- Web application
- API
- Custom integrations with first-party and third-party stacks are available on the Pro tier; no self-serve public API is published.
- Compliance
- SOC 2 Type IIRegional data compliance across the EU, US, and APACGDPR
- Data residency
- Regional compliance across EU, US, and APAC is stated; specific hosting regions are negotiated at the Pro tier.
- SSO
- Enterprise access controls including entity and role-based permissions are Pro-tier features.
- Security notes
- The governance package is the product's strongest technical claim: a no-train policy on customer data, IP assignment and indemnification in the enterprise terms, data ringfencing with access revoked at subscription end, AI governance controls, and custom model selection. All of it applies to Pro rather than to the self-serve tiers.
Support & resources
- Channels
- Chat support on CoreChat support plus product team and roadmap access on GrowthDedicated customer success manager, managed pilots, and creative services on Pro
- Documentation
- Help documentation including a published explanation of exactly what counts as a generation, which is unusually direct for a credit-metered product.
- Community
- No formal user community; the company's presence is through Brandtech Group's agency network and enterprise case studies.
Company
- Founded
- 2018
- Headquarters
- Singapore, with operations across the United States and Europe
- Ownership
- Owned by The Brandtech Group, which acquired Pencil in June 2023
- Founders
- Will Hanschell, Sumukh Avadhani, James Chadwick
- Employees
- Not disclosed separately from The Brandtech Group
- Funding
- Raised approximately $4.1M from Wavemaker Partners and Surge before being acquired by The Brandtech Group in June 2023.
Funding history
| Round | Amount | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Seed and early rounds | Approximately $4.1M | 2020 | Backed by Wavemaker Partners and Surge. |
| Acquisition | Undisclosed | 2023 | Acquired by The Brandtech Group in June 2023. |
Timeline
- 2018Founded in Singapore by Will Hanschell, Sumukh Avadhani, and James Chadwick to apply machine learning to advertising creative production.
- 2021Raises venture backing from Wavemaker Partners and Surge and gains attention for generating dozens of new ad variants per month automatically.
- 2023Acquired by The Brandtech Group in June, joining a group assembling generative AI capability for large brand advertisers.
- 2025Repositions as an agentic marketing operating system covering brief to results, with multi-model orchestration across OpenAI, Google, Adobe, Runway, and Bria.
- 2026Ships an Insights Agent built on GWI consumer intelligence data, and sells self-serve plans at $14 and $55 alongside an enterprise Pro tier with indemnification and data ringfencing.
Integrations
- Facebook and Instagram
- TikTok
- YouTube
- Google Display
- DV360
- GWI consumer intelligence data
- Custom first-party and third-party stack integrations (Pro)
Frequently asked questions
10 questionsWhat is Pencil?
Pencil is a generative AI advertising creative platform. It orchestrates models from OpenAI, Google, Adobe, Runway, and Bria behind one editor to produce ad text, images, and video, scores creative in real time, and distributes finished ads to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google Display, DV360, and LinkedIn. It is owned by The Brandtech Group.
How much does Pencil cost?
Core is $14 a month, or $11 billed annually, for fifty generations a month and one workspace. Growth is $55 a month, or $44 annually, for two hundred and fifty generations and unlimited workspaces. Pro is quoted on committed consumption pricing with unlimited generations, overage charges above quota, and the full enterprise governance package. A free guided experience lets you create six ads at no cost.
What counts as a generation?
Every interaction with an AI model counts as one generation, and that includes AI Auto Resize, where each new format costs a credit. Resizing one concept into ten placements is ten generations. That rule is what determines which plan you need: Core's fifty per month covers roughly five fully resized concepts, which is far less than the headline number suggests.
What happens if I run out of generations?
On the self-serve tiers you stop. Unused generations do not roll over and the monthly allocation cannot be exceeded, so unlike a credit system with overage billing you simply cannot generate again until the cycle resets. Pro moves to committed consumption pricing where overage charges do apply and are billed on actual usage.
Does Pencil's price scale with my ad spend?
No. Pricing is by generation allowance and workspace count with no relationship to media budget. At $5,000 of monthly ad spend, Growth at $55 is 1.1 percent of media; at $25,000 it is 0.2 percent; at $100,000 it is 0.06 percent. It becomes proportionally cheaper as you grow, unlike a percentage-of-spend platform.
Which ad platforms does Pencil distribute to?
Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Google Display, DV360, and LinkedIn, and all seven are available on every plan including the $14 Core tier. That is broader coverage than most creative tools offer, particularly the inclusion of LinkedIn and DV360. Distribution here means publishing creative, not managing the campaigns it runs in.
Does Pencil optimize campaigns?
No. It generates creative, distributes it to connected ad platforms, and shows a results dashboard reporting what happened. It does not change bids, budgets, or targeting anywhere. If you need software acting on ad accounts, that is a different category of tool and Pencil is not in it.
Why would an enterprise buy Pencil rather than a cheaper generator?
For the terms, not the pixels. The Pro tier's enterprise terms of service carry IP assignment, a contractual no-train clause, and indemnification, alongside SOC 2 Type II, regional data compliance across the EU, US, and APAC, data ringfencing, entity and role-based access controls, and custom model selection. That package is what gets generative AI approved by a corporate legal team, and none of it applies to the self-serve tiers, which run on standard terms.
Is the $14 plan a real product or a lead magnet?
Both, honestly. It is a genuine self-serve product with a real editor, multi-model generation including Veo video, scoring, approvals, and distribution to seven platforms, and a small business can use it productively. It is also throttled at fifty generations with no rollover and no overage, and the company's positioning, case studies, roadmap, and support model are all aimed at large brands. Buy it knowing you are not the primary customer.
Who owns Pencil?
The Brandtech Group acquired Pencil in June 2023. Before that it was an independent company founded in Singapore in 2018 by Will Hanschell, Sumukh Avadhani, and James Chadwick, which had raised roughly $4.1 million from Wavemaker Partners and Surge. Brandtech is an advertising group assembling generative AI capability for large brand advertisers, which explains the product's enterprise direction since the acquisition.
Editorial verdict
Pencil is an enterprise creative platform with a self-serve front door, and the two should be judged separately. As a $14 or $55 generator it is respectable: a real editor, multi-model generation including Google's Veo for video, in-platform approvals, and distribution to seven ad platforms including LinkedIn and DV360, which is broader than most competitors manage. The metering is the catch, since every AI interaction including each resize costs a credit, allowances do not roll over, and running out means stopping rather than paying more. As an enterprise product it is genuinely differentiated, because the no-train clause, IP indemnification, data ringfencing, and SOC 2 Type II are what unblock generative AI inside organizations where legal has otherwise said no, and almost nothing else in this category offers that. Buy the self-serve tier to test the output. Buy Pro if the reason you cannot use AI creative today is a contract rather than a capability. Do not buy either expecting anything to be optimized.
Written by the SaaSTracker editorial team. Awards, when shown, are judged against the published criteria in our methodology.