Base44 is one of the most-viewed brands on YouTube. Here’s a look at its ad strategy

It takes more than vibes to advertise a vibe-coding platform.

A year ago, the website-building platform Wix acquired the vibe-coding platform Base44, which allows even non-tech-savvy users to build apps, for about $80 million.

In the first quarter of the year, Wix marketed the platform aggressively in an effort to capture “robust top-of-funnel demand,” Nir Zohar, Wix’s president, said on an earnings call last month. That has included splashy TV buys, like a Super Bowl ad earlier this year, along with a presence on less-conventional platforms like Discord, a wide net that is aimed at heightening brand visibility and capturing a broad audience of people at various stages of AI adoption, Omer Shai, Wix CMO, told Marketing Brew. Base44 is also promoting itself through academic partnerships with higher-education institutions to help students with AI usage skills in a difficult hiring climate.

“If we stop people in the street and we ask them about Base44 and a solution like us, most of the people of the world are still not familiar with it. This is the opportunity that we have for the future,” Shai told us. “On one hand, [it can be a] really robust, comprehensive, in-depth, [and] data-oriented application. On the other hand, it can be also something that I’m doing with my friends. This is the reason that it’s such a broad audience.”

In Q1 2026, Base44 generated about $150 million in annualized recurring revenue, up from the $100 million figure shared during the previous quarter. We had Shai take us into Base44’s marketing strategy to understand how the brand is looking to stand out on and off the screen.

Big screens, small screens

Base44 is making a big splash on YouTube. In Q1, it ranked as the eighth-most viewed US brand by YouTube views, which included more than 679 million views on ads and other consumer-engagement-related video content, according to Tubular Labs. (To reach that figure, the company took into account total monthly views on a brand’s or creator’s video and views for the brand’s or creator’s videos that are used as pre- or mid-roll ads.)

While YouTube makes up a portion of its ad spend, it’s not the only component to its ad strategy, Shai said. The brand is also showing up elsewhere on TV, including through a Super Bowl ad this year that joined other AI brands looking to make an impression.

The 30-second spot, “It’s App to You,” features an office worker showing off Base44 to her coworkers, who dash off to try building apps themselves; according to iSpot, the ad generated 69.4 million TV impressions.

Shai said the spot led to a spike in users, and he “won’t be surprised” if the brand opts to make another Super Bowl ad in the future. The brand also explored the possibility of doing a World Cup ad buy, but ultimately chose not to due to the cost, he said. Meanwhile, Shai said, the brand is running ads on Google TV–enabled smart TVs.

A Super Bowl ad is one way to get in front of a broad swath of people, but Base44 is also investing in a more curated community online. It’s primarily doing that through a channel on Discord, which he said recently cleared 44,000 active members. On that channel, Base44 users can share their work and chat with one another, Shai said.

“Building the builders’ community around our product and around our brand is something that is super important for us,” he said. “We are not looking at that as a traffic source. [It’s] giving back to [the] community a place where they can interact with each other and with us.”

Hitting the books

Base44 is also plugging its products with the younger generation through academic partnerships, a strategy that other AI companies have also invested in as they look to brand themselves as champions of learning. For Base44, that includes working with about 1,000 higher-education institutions globally, including MIT, Shai told us. Base44’s efforts on college campuses focus in part on helping students create work that may help them stand out after graduation in a job market that is increasingly looking for candidates with AI skills.

For some students currently in college, they are “facing some questions and asking [themselves], ‘The decision that I took two years ago when I went to study blank, [is it] going to be still relevant in two years?’” Shai said. “We believe that a product like us helps them to be better and gives them more tools [for] facing the uncertainty of the economy [and] the uncertainty of the employment sphere.”