Dive Brief:

• Marketing software platform MNTN acquired video creation platform QuickFrame, according to an announcement. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
• Now branded QuickFrame by MNTN, the service helps brands streamline the process of creating video assets and activating them on TV as part of MNTN's "creative-as-a-subscription" model that looks to tie together creative development and media buying.
• The acquisition beefs up MNTN's offering of a self-service platform that looks to make running connected TV (CTV) campaigns as simple as search or social ones. The deal comes less than a year after the company's acquisition of Maximum Effort Marketing, the agency founded by George Dewey and actor Ryan Reynolds.

Dive Insight:

MNTN continues to build out its capabilities as it seeks to bring performance and simplicity to CTV advertising with the acquisition of QuickFrame, a platform that has built a network of thousands of creators and produced video ads for more than 1,000 clients across 20 verticals, per the press release. QuickFrame's ability to streamline the ad creation process aligns with MNTN's creative-as-a-subscription model.

"There is an overwhelming demand for brands to keep their ad content relevant and easily scale their video output," MNTN CEO Mark Douglas said in the release. "This acquisition represents an important milestone in transforming the business model away from the complicated process of buying creative and media separately."

MNTN has looked to bring media and creative in the booming CTV space. TV — including CTV — is considered the most valuable video format for achieving advertisers' goals, with two in five advertisers planning to increase their CTV/OTT ad spending an average of 16%, per an Advertiser Perceptions survey. But while eMarketer expects more than 213 million CTV viewers in the U.S. to stream over a billion hours of video content every week this year, the format faces persistent issues with fragmentation and measurement that the ad industry is still working to fully address.

QuickFrame CEO and founder Lucas Loeffler will remain president of the new subsidiary. While the QuickFrame deal helps with the nuts-and-bolts of creating video campaigns, it is perhaps less buzzy than MNTN's 2021 acquisition of Maximum Effort, the creative agency co-founded by Ryan Reynolds.

Since being acquired, Maximum Effort has continued to produce campaigns — like a since-pulled Peloton ad that referenced its association with the "Sex and the City" revival — that quickly responded to moments of cultural fascination. That agility is in line with the new acquisition, which could help brands of all sizes move faster and more efficiently, Reynolds said in the release.

"We believe fast and affordable are not the enemy of great creative. Quite the opposite. Some of Maximum Effort’s best work has been when we’ve been moving quickly with limited time and resources," he said.