San Francisco-based marketing automation startup Notch has unveiled Max, an autonomous AI performance marketer designed to manage digital advertising campaigns across platforms including Meta and TikTok. The company says the system can handle creative production, campaign deployment, performance monitoring, budget allocation, and ongoing optimization while operating within rules established by marketers. Notch also disclosed results from an experiment with e-commerce brand Scentless, where it said Max helped increase sales while reducing customer acquisition costs by 30%.
Automating Performance Marketing
Notch is targeting the operational workload associated with managing performance advertising for e-commerce and retail businesses, particularly as brands increase spending across multiple digital channels. Many existing artificial intelligence marketing tools focus on individual tasks such as generating copy, creating images, or suggesting campaign changes, while marketers remain responsible for executing and coordinating campaigns. Notch is positioning Max as a more autonomous system that connects these functions into a continuous advertising workflow.
The platform analyzes advertising account data and market activity before developing weekly campaign strategies and communicating recommendations through Slack. It can produce video and static advertising assets, deploy approved campaigns through platform APIs, monitor creative fatigue, and track metrics such as return on advertising spend. Max also monitors competitors and advertising trends to identify potential creative concepts and incorporates campaign results into subsequent testing and optimization decisions.
Autonomous Campaign Experiment
To demonstrate the platform's capabilities, Notch conducted a two-month experiment using Scentless, a direct-to-consumer brand, with what the company described as minimal human oversight. Max was connected to the company's Shopify store and Meta advertising account and provided with a collection of raw video footage that could be used to generate advertisements. During the experiment, the system analyzed market conditions, created video campaigns, replaced underperforming creative material, and adjusted advertising budgets based on performance data.
According to Notch, the experiment resulted in increased sales for Scentless while lowering customer acquisition costs by approximately 30%, although the company did not disclose additional financial or campaign-performance figures. As part of a promotional demonstration, Notch also sent a laptop operating Max into space while the software continued managing the live advertising campaign remotely. The company presented the experiment as evidence that the system can continue operating campaigns with limited direct intervention once integrations and automation parameters have been established.
Human Oversight and Controls
Despite positioning Max as an autonomous marketer, Notch has incorporated human approval mechanisms designed to give customers control over campaign activity. Creative assets and budget adjustments can be configured to require explicit approval before implementation, while customers can also establish predefined rules allowing certain actions to occur automatically. This approach is intended to combine automated campaign execution with governance controls that determine how much operational authority companies delegate to the software.
Experienced Advertising Technology Founders
Notch was co-founded by Vinay Jain and Aman Jain, whose backgrounds include advertising and infrastructure roles at Meta, Twitter, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Vinay Jain spent eight years working on Meta's advertising products, including Meta Lead Ads, while Aman Jain previously worked on Twitter's Direct Response Ads team and later contributed to Instagram Live and the WhatsApp Business API. The founders are applying that experience to building infrastructure intended to automate many of the repetitive processes traditionally handled by performance marketing teams and agencies.
The startup is backed by Wing Venture Capital, South Park Commons, Patron Fund, and a group of angel investors, although the company did not disclose new financing as part of the announcement. Wing Venture Capital partner Tanay Jaipuria said the founders' experience building advertising infrastructure positions the company to address operational bottlenecks in digital marketing. Notch says its technology has already produced more than 85,000 live advertisements for hundreds of companies.
Notch's launch of Max reflects a broader push toward AI agents capable of executing business processes rather than simply assisting employees with individual tasks. By combining creative generation, campaign deployment, advertising analysis, budget management, and optimization within one system, the company is seeking to automate a substantial portion of performance marketing operations. Its longer-term adoption will depend on whether autonomous campaign management can consistently deliver measurable results while maintaining the oversight and control that brands require when managing advertising budgets.