By Seb Joseph  •  July 3, 2025  •

Ivy Liu

Or at least that’s what it wants to be. Because Cluely launched a narrative before it launched a tool. And somehow, it’s working. 

Call it a narrative first-growth. And it’s been a conversation starter in ad tech circles since the funding news broke last week — less because of what Cluely does, and more because of how it made people pay attention. Without the spectacle, the argument goes, there’s no $120 million post-money valuation. 

“Generating massive attention doesn’t necessarily lead to revenue but once it does it can have a compounding effect — unless the product itself sucks,” said Joe Zappa, CEO and founder of marketing and communications firm Sharp Pen Media. 

For ad tech operators, this is unfamiliar terrain. The default is still to build, test then talk. But in a market where everyone is mid-pivot — from point solutions to platforms, from buyer tools to publisher tools (and back again) — value props are starting to blur. AI only accelerates the trend. As the technology gets commoditized, so do the products built on top of it. 

“It’s always been the case, much to the chagrin of ad tech founders, that a better product doesn’t lead to a better business but that’s truer than ever now that AI is making it much easier to build products,” said Zappa.

Which is why Cluely’s moment lands. It crystallizes something that the ad tech industry’s been circling around: in a crowded field, attention is often a moat. 

Or as marketing expert James Kirkham put it: “It’s a cultural story, not a tech one where they’ve tapped into something visceral i.e. anxiety, burnout, the hunger for shortcuts.”

It might sound like spin, but Kirkham has a point. That emotional shorthand — the viral clips, the headline-friendly provocations — is doing more heavy lifting than the product itself. And that’s intentional. Cluely’s CEO Roy Chung has said he only hires for two roles — engineer or influencer, The rest, apparently, is just noise. 

Comments like that make ad tech veterans flinch. It all feels too chaotic, too unserious, too slippery to scale. But maybe that’s the point. 

This was an industry, after all, that once thrived on speed and ambiguity. It operated in the margins, built fast, marketed faster and worried about the consequences later. Then came the lawsuits, the regulators, the endless compliance decks. And somewhere along the way, the storytelling stopped. 

What’s left is an ecosystem full of interchangeable platforms, sanitized messaging and the quiet hope that product alone will carry the story. It was an overcorrection — one that left little room for the kind of provocation Cluely is now capitalizing on. 

“Because if you have 10 people working at your company, and all of them are generating hundreds of thousands or millions of views you can create a massive lead based on trust that then turns into a durable lead,” said Zappa. 

Still, attention isn’t the same as staying power. 

Cluely has a story, sure. But what it doesn’t have — yet — is a working product. And even if it ships eventually, the brand it’s built comes with risk. 

“It reminds me a bit of what we’re seeing with a lot of companies right now claiming to have ‘agentic’ AI solutions and automated workflows — but when you look under the hood, it’s often just a deck and a demo,” said Patel. “Hasn’t this kind of hype cycle been going on for a while?”

He’s right. Silicon Valley has long rewarded founders who err on the side of spectacle. But the road to a successful exit is rarely paved in provocation alone. The edge is a powerful place to market from — until you fall off. 

That’s why ad tech’s caution makes sense. Controversy travels well on social media, but rarely in procurement meetings. CMOs, IT leads, compliance officers — they don’t sign contracts because something went viral. 

Patel gets that. At his ad tech firm SWYM, the approach is slower, educational videos on the dynamics and economics of programmatic advertising on LinkedIn, steady brand-building, no theatrics. 

“For us at SWYM, the content we’re putting out isn’t about being edgy for attention, “ he continued. “It’s about educating and re-framing how people think about programmatic media and automation — and that’s why I’m pretty protective of the narrative we’re building.”

The lesson isn’t to copy Cluely’s tone. The risks — regulatory, reputational, operational — are real. The smarter takeaway is this: attention works best when it rides on top of something solid — a clear voice, a defined point of view and a reason for people to care. 

“Being able to earn mindshare with a hype and a controversial position is amazing but at some point you have to deliver,” said Chris Ross, vp analyst at Gartner’s marketing practice. “There are lots of stories where there was a great narrative but the product never really delivered.”

https://digiday.com/?p=582378