Canva, the popular design platform, has announced its acquisition of Sydney-based advertising analytics startup, MagicBrief. This marks its 12th acquisition to date. It is a significant step beyond its traditional design roots. The financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed. However, this strategic move solidifies Canva’s ambition to transform into a full-service marketing platform. It directly challenges established players like Adobe.
Expanding Beyond Design to Full-Funnel AI Marketing
The acquisition of MagicBrief represents Canva’s most deliberate move to deepen its push into ad analytics and marketing performance. MagicBrief, founded in 2022, offers insights on ad spending, engagement rates, and competitor benchmarks. This technology will now be integrated into Canva’s evolving ecosystem. It allows users to create, deploy, and analyze their content all within the same platform. Cliff Obrecht, Canva’s co-founder and COO, confirmed that MagicBrief’s tools will be integrated into a new Canva product set to launch later this year.
This integration aims to streamline creative and performance workflows for Canva’s vast user base. The platform now totals more than 240 million globally. As Obrecht stated, “With MagicBrief joining Canva, we’re entering the next frontier.” We are powering the entire content and marketing workflow. This ranges from ideation and creation to deployment, measurement, and now analysis and optimisation.” George Howes, co-founder and CEO of MagicBrief, stated that joining Canva elevates their vision. It helps them reach more marketers. They aim to “turn great ideas into high performing creative.”
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MagicBrief’s Expertise and Impact for Marketers
MagicBrief has rapidly made a name for itself, having analyzed over $6 billion in ad spend. Its client roster includes notable brands such as Fenty Beauty, Koala, and Linktree. The platform provides capabilities like scoring creative performance, generating smart briefs, and recommending formats based on market effectiveness. This move by Canva reflects a growing demand for tools that can both create and optimize content, especially as teams face increasing content overload and performance pressure.
Intensified Rivalry with Adobe and Broader AI Ambitions
Canva’s acquisition of MagicBrief significantly intensifies its ongoing rivalry with Adobe. Adobe’s Creative Cloud remains dominant among professional designers. However, Canva has gained substantial traction due to its simplicity and accessibility. It is now being used by 90 percent of Fortune 500 companies. The addition of marketing analytics features is expected to deepen Canva’s appeal to corporate and small-to-medium business (SMB) clients. Adobe has also recently introduced its own AI-powered ad tools for creating and tracking ad performance, indicating a competitive landscape where AI-enabled campaign tools are a key battleground. Other tech giants like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Reddit are also pushing generative AI systems to boost online ad reach.
This acquisition aligns with Canva’s larger ambition to lead the AI-driven transformation of creative and business tools. The company has been actively expanding its AI offerings. It launched Canva Sheets, an AI-powered spreadsheet tool. It also introduced Magic Charts and Canva Code. All these tools are driven by generative AI. MagicBrief’s data analytics technology is expected to complement these AI tools. It enhances how users interpret campaign success. Moreover, it helps users respond dynamically. These improvements move Canva closer to its goal of “democratizing marketing”.
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