Margle Media makes viral digital ads for clients
Millions of ‘likes’ used for consumer research
In a media landscape where everyone is fighting for attention, Milwaukee-based Margle Media is winning.
This company will make you go viral.
A monkey giving a yellow Lab a bath. Making a black diamond ring. A woman crushing watermelons with her thighs. Pain relief from hemp. A laundry folding machine.
Margle’s videos average 1 billion views a month. The company makes around 3,000 videos a month for more than 60 publishers on Facebook. The team specializes in editing quick, 30to 60-second videos.
The marketing shop started a little more than a year ago with Luke Marlowe and Shay Rowbottom editing videos from their downtown apartment. President Cheyn Crangle joined shortly after.
The team expanded to 37 employees. Its revenue has exploded. Its revenue in March — more than $350,000 — is nearly 20 times higher than this time last year.
The team produces videos for Facebook pages with massive followings. “I Love My Dog” has 5.5 million “likes.” One that bills itself as “the world’s official source for memes” has been “liked” nearly 13 million times. And the page called “Power of Positivity” has more than 24 million “likes.” Margle said it recently signed a deal with retailer Petco Animal Supplies Inc. to
supply its Facebook page with a daily video.
Jim Bushmiller’s Christian community page, Gods411, had been stuck around 700,000 “likes” when he hired Margle in September.
“About the second month in, it just kind of took off,” Bushmiller said. “It was an overwhelming response. The videos they were producing really connected with my audience.”
“Never underestimate the power of prayer” got 20 million views. “Woman’s leftovers answer prayer and feed homeless children” was watched 16 million times. Gods411 now has more than 1.5 million “likes.”
“The growth has been pretty crazy,” Bushmiller said. “It is because of the videos.”
While seeking business advice, Margle gained the attention of a South Dakota holding company, Anza.
“In that market, in that world, there are a lot of opportunities because it’s evolving and changing with digital ad placement,” said Greg Kulesa, president of Anza. “They seem like the kind of people who can take advantage of that.”
The two companies signed a deal in May. Anza took over some of Margle’s management needs, such as finance and legal, in exchange for an equity stake in the company.
Kulesa is hesitant to even try to predict future growth for Margle.
“Any number I put out there might be low,” he said.
Baiting viewers without click bait
The secret is to bait viewers into watching the video, without becoming “click bait.” “That’s a fine line,” Marlowe said. “(Most people) craft a story so that the meat, the big climactic point, is toward the end or halfway through,” Rowbottom said. “It’s really the opposite with viral videos. You have to give the meat right away.
“This is Facebook,” she said. “This is a different world.”
With its quick rise as a startup — Margle is just a year old — the company has pivoted and expanded what it does on Facebook.
The business started with editing viral videos and selling the content to large publishers. Often, those videos would feature a cool product or service.
Margle features products and services that people would share a video about on Facebook just because it’s cool.
There’s Budsies, a company that takes children’s drawings and turns them into stuffed animals. Budsies also makes Petsies, stuffed animal lookalikes of your dog, cat or even lizard. Or the Apples to Apples style card game What Do You Meme?, which pairs together viral Internet memes with captions.
“We would just see these videos get 5 million, 6 million views and we would get emails from people saying ‘you’ve changed my life,’ ” Marlowe said. “‘I’ve sold out. I’ve never gotten this much traffic before.’ We started to be like, ‘Wow we really have something valuable here.’ ”
Marlowe and the Margle team realized their ability to make viral videos could be even more useful for the companies making the products than the publishers. Margle is positioning itself to grab the advertising dollars transitioning to digital. The share of ad spending in digital media is projected to increase from 49% in 2018 to 62% in 2022, according to eMarketer.
These days, viral videos are just a fraction of Margle’s revenue. Margle started running advertising campaigns for companies on Facebook in the fall.
One of Margle’s new ad clients is Fab CBD, a line of pain relief products made from hemp.
Fab CBD’s owner, Josh Delaney, worked with Crangle a few years ago.
“His business is exactly what I need, and mine is what he needs,” Delaney said.
“They very much like the businesses that have buzzworthy stories and trendy topics,” Delaney said. “They’re the types of businesses that you can create viral content around. Fits well in video. It’s just very shareable. And that’s very much what we are as Fab CBD.”
Delaney’s company is young too — Fab CBD started just a few months ago. Margle began making videos and buying ads for the company on Facebook last month. With the help from Margle, Fab CBD’s products have sold out twice already, Delaney said.
Margle’s posts get better results than the industry average. Delaney said his conversion rate are typically between 6% to 8%. Fab CBD’s revenues doubled after the campaign launch, Delaney said.
Margle uses its first line of business — posting to pages with large followings — to get those results.
“Because we have these publishers, we can take the product, make a viral video about it, post it on the publisher’s page, accumulate hundreds of thousands of views, and get that warm data,” Rowbottom said. “Now we go re-target ads with (the newly collected data) instead of starting from scratch. It’s an advantage for sure.”
That formula seems to be working. Margle is still growing. The company is hiring four more employees. Crangle and the Margle team have high goals.
Crangle said he thinks Margle is going to be one of the top revenue-producing digital marketing agencies in the United States.
“I think in the next 24 months,” Crangle said.
Sarah Hauer can be reached at shauer@journalsentinel.com or on Twitter @SarahHauer and Instagram @HauerSarah.