New Engen Acquires Grapevine to Scale Creator-Led Performance Marketing

New Engen announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire Grapevine, a creator-powered performance content network that enables brands to produce authentic creator-driven content and activate it at scale through whitelisted paid social campaigns. The move strengthens New Engen’s position in creator-led marketing as paid social continues to evolve.

The acquisition reflects a broader transformation in paid social advertising, where brands are shifting more budget toward creator-produced content distributed through whitelisting rather than traditional brand-handle ads. As creative formats, influencer relationships, and media buying increasingly converge, brands face growing pressure to source high-performing, authentic creator content at volume. By bringing Grapevine into its portfolio, New Engen addresses this challenge head-on, expanding its creator-powered capabilities while improving scalability and performance consistency.

“As media buying becomes increasingly automated, creative and audience access are emerging as the primary growth levers in paid social,” said Justin Hayashi, CEO at New Engen. “Creator-led content isn’t just a format shift-it’s becoming growth infrastructure. Grapevine strengthens our ability to help brands scale that infrastructure with measurable impact.”

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Grapevine operates a curated network of more than 700 performance-focused creators and provides end-to-end support across the content lifecycle. The company aligns creators to clear business objectives through strategic briefing, manages pre- and post-production optimization internally, and distributes creator-produced, advertorial-style content using creator and publisher whitelisting across paid social platforms. This approach allows brands to move beyond brand-handle-only advertising while maintaining strong cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and return on ad spend (ROAS). In addition to paid social activation, Grapevine also supports brands with high-performing editorial, blog, and long-form creator content.

“This partnership gives Grapevine the scale and infrastructure to expand what we can offer brands while continuing to focus on creator-led performance,” said Caroline Levere, CEO and co-founder of Grapevine. “New Engen and Grapevine already share clients like Arrae and Rugiet, and this is a natural next step that allows us to accelerate our vision and deliver more creative, media, and measurement capabilities to our clients.”

With this acquisition, New Engen further strengthens its creator-centric performance marketing stack within its broader full-funnel digital marketing offering. Grapevine’s creator-led, whitelisted distribution model complements Donut Studios’ high-volume brand-handle creative, as well as New Engen’s influencer marketing, media activation, and measurement capabilities. Together, these offerings position New Engen to help brands drive performance at scale by uniting creative production, creator partnerships, and paid media execution under one integrated strategy.