Pittsburgh-based ad agency Brunner has acquired AdSkate, an AI-powered creative analytics and predictive platform. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.  

AdSkate is designed to predict how advertising creative will perform before it launches, using synthetic audience modeling and AI analysis of engagement drivers. It was launched in 2019 in Pittsburgh with roots in the Carnegie Mellon innovation ecosystem.  

According to the company, the platform analyzes advertising performance across images, video, messaging, and audience segments to identify the creative elements that drive engagement, conversion, and return on ad spend.   

The platform is positioned as one that takes an analytics approach to transform creative optimization from a subjective process into a data-driven discipline. 

"Marketing is entering a new era where creative intelligence is becoming just as important as media intelligence," said Kevin Amos, partner and chief media and data officer at Brunner. "Today's CMOs aren't asking for more data, they're asking for better answers. AdSkate has built an innovative platform that helps marketers understand not only what is performing, but why it is performing.”  

Akaash Ramakrishnan, co-founder and CEO at AdSkate, will become senior director-AI and innovation at Brunner. Shreyas Venugopalan, co-founder and chief technology officer at AdSkate, will join as AI and technology consultant at Brunner. Max Rosen, creative technology specialist at AdSkate, will become creative technologist at Brunner.  

AdSkate has worked with brands and agencies, and Brunner’s release announcing the deal quoted an outside agency executive—Walton Isaacson’s Albert Thompson on the positive impact of the platform.

Going forward, the platform will still be available to outside agencies, said Dan Gbur, partner-performance marketing/digital performance marketing at Brunner. "We will offer AdSkate solutions to both current and future AdSkate and Brunner customers," he said. "That could include outside agencies that want to put innovative solutions such as these to work for their clients."

Brunner was founded in 1989 and has a staff of 150+ with clients including Aerie, Church’s Texas Chicken, Fred Rogers Institute, and Mitsubishi North America.