# Pencil Reviews **Vendor:** Pencil **Category:** [Social Media Advertising Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/social-media-advertising) **Average Rating:** 4.8/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 14 ## About Pencil Pencil is the enterprise agentic marketing OS. It is the only platform covering the full marketing workflow, from brief to results, with AI agents at every step. Built for enterprise marketing teams, Pencil replaces fragmented tool stacks with a single operating system where every step lives in one place: insights, briefing, planning, creation, adaptation, approval, deployment, activation, analysis, optimisation, and reporting. AI agents handle the repetitive production work while humans stay on strategy, creative direction, and sign-off. Pencil takes an Open Garden approach to AI models, integrating OpenAI, Google, Adobe Firefly, Bria, Runway, and others, so teams always get the best output regardless of which model produces it. Brand guardrails ensure every generation stays on-brand, on-message, and compliant, no matter the model or market. The platform includes purpose-built agents for image generation, video generation, beauty shots, ad improvement, consumer insights, audience personas, campaign ideation, brand strategy, media planning, and more. Every deliverable is tracked from brief to results with full cost-per-asset and creative performance visibility, giving both CMOs and CFOs a single source of truth. Pencil has been running AI in enterprise marketing production since 2018. It is part of The Brandtech Group, the world's largest independent marketing technology group. Named Most Innovative Company 2024 by Fast Company and recognised as a Gartner Cool Vendor 2025, Pencil is trusted by 1,000+ enterprise brands including Diageo, Unilever, Indeed, Salomon, and L'Oréal, with 88,000+ users and over 10 million generations to date. Enterprise-grade security including SOC2 compliance and IP indemnity comes standard. ## Pencil Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **convenient integration of leading GenAI models** within Pencil for optimized ad production. (1 reviews) ## Pencil Reviews ### 1. Game Changer **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Sam Y. | Customer Success Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 06, 2025 **What do you like best about Pencil?** This is a revolutionary platform. Of particular note: - All the best GenAI models in one place - Integrated performance data to optimise ad production - Feed variations to scale content - In built brand library - Chat-to-ads! **What do you dislike about Pencil?** There isn't really anything wrong with Pencil. It is ready to go. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** Faster, cheaper and better performing ad production ### 2. This is exactly what we needed! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Alexis P. | Marketing Promotions Coordinator, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 14, 2023 **What do you like best about Pencil?** Pencil has been super helpful for our small teamed brand to be able to create and scale different ads that can be beneficial on multiple platforms. We also really love how we have a direct rep (Embee is amazing!) that communicates with us when necessary and even thinks ahead for us when we're swamped with work to provide us with some tips and new creatives that are beneficial to test. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** We've had some issues downloading the creatives from the site and it freezing on us but we can always reach out to the team with this issue and it is fixed almost immediately. The team is always ready for feedback and they are always appreciative and willing to assist or find solutions. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** They're helping us create ads on a larger scale since we are such a small team and don't always have the time to test multiple ads at once. They provide us with static images and videos for every product we look to test. ### 3. Excellent product and amazing team **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Mike M. | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** March 15, 2023 **What do you like best about Pencil?** The concept is pretty amazing and the ads generated by Pencil have been some of the best performers for our clients. The team continues to innovate and is always adding new features that help improve the product. I cannot think of a faster way to generate quality creative for your paid social accounts. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** It is the classic, you get what you put in scenario. Because the platform relies on existing images and video, you need to have high-quality assets in order to get quality outputs. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** We had trouble generating enough creative to keep up with our testing goals, and Pencil fixed that by allowing us to create multiple variations of a given concept with the click of a couple buttons. ### 4. Ai enhanced tool that takes 1 creative asset and turns it into 20 in minutes. **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nicholas B. | Lead Media Buyer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2022 **What do you like best about Pencil?** As a marketing agency, content creation has quickly become the greatest lever we can pull in terms of increased performance in the ad accounts we manage. Pencil allows us the opportunity to quickly turn one creative into so many more. We can use ai enhanced decision-making to turn one top performing creatives into as many varital options as we have time to create. 1 idea, 1 ad copy, one creative can become 4 finished products in 2-3 minutes. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** Ai gets you 90% of the way to a finished product. As you input 10 creatives and multiple ad copies for it to pull from, it can often push out a video that's not quite ad ready. But, as you use the system more often and it learns to the choices and decisions you make in the editor it gets better at producing fully ad ready content. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** Pencil solves the problem of content fatigue and creative quantity. You may need to add 10 creatives to Facebook in order to find 1 winner. Pencil allows us to quickly create creatives to test, as well as, iterate on current winners to reduce fatigue. ### 5. An essential tool for performance marketers **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Marketing and Advertising | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 01, 2022 **What do you like best about Pencil?** The technology works as advertised and so much more. Depending on your level of engagement, the service team assigned to your account is a huge asset. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** Nothing at the moment. We feel the product is solid and improving all the time. The team assigned to help us has been great. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** Our ability to scale our content, test, iterate, and make performance increases have been accelerated to a massive degree without a considerable investment. ### 6. An awesome, very powerful platform for any advertiser to create winning ads! **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Gil D. | Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Pencil?** Speed - you can generate several perfectly-sized videos (and now images!) in literally a few minutes. No more waiting days for a designer if you are under pressure to find a winning ad quickly. Quality - this has improved a lot in recent months along with editing features that make it easy for anyone to create ads that are ready to go soon as you upload them to ads manager. The platform is always improving, and the new analytics features are becoming ever-more useful as they develop. It's also great that their own team will generate ads occasionally for you. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** Editing can be a little clunky at times and there is the odd bug (that the team is great at resolving), apart from that nothing really! **Recommendations to others considering Pencil:** Go for it! **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** Generating performing ad creative at scale and at warp speed, it saves a ton of time brainstorming and waiting for ad creative to be produced plus it learns and makes better creative as you go on! ### 7. Must-Have Secret Weapon to Scale Paid Social Ads **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Rob C. | Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 03, 2021 **What do you like best about Pencil?** Pencil takes both the guesswork and the bias out of creating video ads so that virtually anyone can produce a wide range of creatives all with a better than decent chance of delivering a winner, or more likely multiple winners, thanks to the added value of the predictive AI feature. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** No downside; this is a powerful platform both to create world-class creatives and to predict their relative success, thereby saving time and money, two of the most valuable resources for any brand. **Recommendations to others considering Pencil:** Great for any business looking to bring ad creatives in-house at a fraction of the cost with the potential to yield even higher results. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** I'm saving a ton of money by not hiring an outside agency to create ads and, more importantly, achieving better results, as measured by the only metric that matters at the end of the day, ROAS. ### 8. Excellent creative automation platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Adrian W. | Performance Marketing Manager, Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 09, 2021 **What do you like best about Pencil?** Speed and ease of creation of new video assets, and ability to export with multiple formats and even beyond the specs for just Facebook. The team is also incredibly supportive and on hand to help deliver new assets at a moment's notice! **What do you dislike about Pencil?** Nothing noteworthy - only have requested to have a bit more customisation capability in the Editor tool, like adding in and snipping audio files to layer over the raw video assets. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** Creative production at scale - as a start-up with limited access to full creative agencies or teams, Pencil has unlocked the ability for us to keep pushing out and testing new performance assets. ### 9. A must have if you advertise on Facebook **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Saul K. | Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 04, 2021 **What do you like best about Pencil?** With the release of iOS 14.5, it's never been harder to advertise on Facebook. The key to success is testing, testing, testing. Pencil makes creating new content easy and faster. You upload your assests and the A.I. magic does it's thing to pump out an unlimited amount of new video ads. Add in the ability to predict creative success before going live and you've got a killer platform to help increase Facebook conversion rates. The team at Pencil are extremely proactive. They'll help you set up your account and generate creative to help you. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** There is a slight learning curve with the product but the Pencil team helped me navigate this curve. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1) Time spent briefing designers on ad creative 2) Volume of creative increases with using Pencil. 3) The likelihood of creative success increases with Pencil's predictive analytics. ### 10. Quick, performance focused creative **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Nathaniel C. | C, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2021 **What do you like best about Pencil?** Producing high quality and high volume creative for paid social can get expensive. Plus it can be difficult to evaluative what ad creative is working and why. With Pencil, it's all done for you for a fraction of the price and almost instantly. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** It'd be cool to add captions to audio but nothing else comes to mind **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** 1) Performance creative at scale 2) learnings to inform future creative 3) more creative :) ### 11. Pencil levels up your creative game and gives unprecedented scale, supported by a world class team **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James H. | Head of Growth, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 07, 2021 **What do you like best about Pencil?** Creative AI to help scale performance media Unbiased machine generation Easy connection to Facebook Great team who genuinely care and want to help you win **What do you dislike about Pencil?** Very occasional growing pains and minor bugs, which the team iron out super quickly. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** Helping unblock creative bottlenecks in the business Generating winning creatives that help drive real growth Testing new copy and concepts we wouldn't have otherwise done ### 12. Great experience with Pencil! **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2021 **What do you like best about Pencil?** Pencil allows you to quickly make ads that actually work! I love that you can export different sizes for different dimension requirements. Outside of making ads, they also offer insights and analysis that help you identify fatiguing ads and allow you to replace them quickly. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** I wish some editing features were easier to use, such as swapping a background image for a video with something that might not have been included in the original brief. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** Making ads promptly. This is especially helpful when we have campaigns that have a rapid deadline and need assets ASAP ### 13. The Team at Pencil is Amazing!!! **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** donna s. | Co-Founder, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 06, 2021 **What do you like best about Pencil?** The team at Pencil is absolutely fantastic. They are very smart, extremely responsive and have helped my business grow, and were extremely patient with me while I was learning the need/value of online marketing. The team always took feedback and understood what I was saying at every turn. They are beyond great people and only want what is best for the business! **What do you dislike about Pencil?** Nothing!! They are awesome! The team at Pencil is amazing. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** Facebook/Instagram marketing using video platform to engage more customers. ### 14. Pencil Review **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Health, Wellness and Fitness | Mid-Market (51-1000 emp.) **Reviewed Date:** December 08, 2021 **What do you like best about Pencil?** I like the opportunity to create ads quickly myself, without going to our design team with a small creative ask. **What do you dislike about Pencil?** There are some elements of the interface that I feel could be simplified, especially when it comes to editing the designs. **What problems is Pencil solving and how is that benefiting you?** We have solved some creative output problems with Pencil. It is pretty quick and easy to spin up solid ads when our ads fatigue. - [View Pencil pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/pencil-pencil/reviews?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-06-14+10%3A39%3A14+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=702b448d-4e35-45b8-9f8f-957f4b83c8ea&secure%5Btoken%5D=486ad292e538ae0c982e1d8d78ca420150cf3c866c50342731ba2d9655513ce2&format=llm_user) ## Pencil Features **Platform Interoperability** - Close Ecosystem API **Agentic AI - Social Media Advertising** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Social Functionality** - Social Functionality **Campaign Management** - Campaign Dashboard - Campaign Optimization - Reach - Bulk Editing - Batch Uploading - Brand Safety - Fraud Protection - Frequency Capping - Budget Pacing - Creative Optimization - Rich Media Capabilties - In-App Ads - Mobile Rich Media Capabilities **Targeting** - Targeting - Retargeting - Geo-Targeting - Contextual Targeting **Platform** - API / Integrations - Custom Reports - User, Role, and Access Management - Performance and Reliability - Enterprise Scalability - Customization - Workflow Capability - Internationalization - Notifications ## Top Pencil Alternatives - [AdCreative.ai](https://www.g2.com/products/adcreative-ai/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (779 reviews) - [HubSpot Marketing Hub](https://www.g2.com/products/hubspot-marketing-hub/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (14,136 reviews) - [ActiveCampaign](https://www.g2.com/products/activecampaign/reviews) - 4.4/5.0 (14,164 reviews)