Pencil

What is Pencil?

Pencil is an AI-powered ad creative tool built specifically for performance marketers. Upload your product images, brand colours, and audience information, and Pencil generates dozens of ad variants — for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube — in the time it would take to manually design one. More than just image generation, Pencil predicts creative performance before you run the ads, surfacing which variants are most likely to drive clicks and conversions based on patterns from millions of existing campaigns.

The key difference between Pencil and general design tools is intent. Pencil is built around a single outcome: ad performance. Every feature — the generation, the prediction engine, the variant library, the direct ad manager integrations — exists to help marketers test more creative, spend smarter, and find winning ads faster.

What Pencil generates

From your brand assets and a brief, Pencil produces:

Pencil also bundles these into concept packs — groups of 5–10 related variants around a single theme or message angle. Instead of one ad, you test a full concept at once.

The performance prediction layer

Pencil's most distinctive feature is its AI prediction score. Before you send a creative to Meta Ads Manager, Pencil scores it against historical performance data from campaigns across its user base. A high-scoring variant has patterns — visual composition, copy structure, colour contrast, headline placement — that correlate with higher CTR and lower CPM in past campaigns.

This doesn't guarantee results, but it shifts the odds. Rather than testing all 20 variants with equal budget and waiting two weeks for data, you can front-load spend on the 4–5 variants Pencil rates highest and confirm quickly.

Getting started

1. Go to pencil.dev and sign up
2. Create a brand profile — upload your logo, product images, brand colours, and font guidelines
3. Set up your target audience: age, interests, platform, and campaign goal (awareness, conversion, traffic)
4. Write a brief or choose a template: "30% off sale," "product launch," "testimonial campaign," "feature highlight"
5. Pencil generates a concept pack of 8–12 creative variants
6. Review predictions — star your top performers
7. Export directly to Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads, or download files for YouTube

When Pencil works best

Pencil delivers the most value for teams that are already running paid ads and want to test more creative volume:

• DTC brands running performance campaigns on Meta or TikTok
• Growth teams who need to refresh creative monthly without hiring a designer
• Agencies managing multiple clients who need fast, brand-consistent output
• E-commerce stores during key commercial moments — Black Friday, product launches, seasonal sales

If you are running your first ads and do not yet have performance data or brand assets, start with a simpler tool and come back to Pencil once you have something to optimise.

Pencil vs other creative tools