Brands are fleeing TV for social. The agency behind 50 Cent’s and Alix Earle’s viral Super Bowl-week ads just sold for at least $100 million

Two of the most viral ads of the past two Super Bowls didn’t run on national television. Alix Earle’s “hangover burger” spot for Carl’s Jr. in 2025 and 50 Cent’s “Beef 101” campaign for DoorDash this year were built for social media.

The Atlanta-based social-first marketing agency that worked on both campaigns, Get Engaged, has entered a partnership with SAMY, a global social-first marketing company, in what cofounder Cam Fordham told Fortune exclusively is a “low nine-figure deal,” with a stock and cash component and an “injection of resources to scale even further.” That means the deal is valued at at least $100 million. The deal closed Sept. 30, and all three cofounders (Fordham, Alex Dermer, and Ben Hiott) are staying. Dermer will take the CEO title.

“Fundamentally, it’s an acquisition, but the founders, all of us here today, will remain,” Fordham said. 

From Facebook side hustle to virality

Get Engaged started in 2016 as what Hiott calls “essentially a side hustle.” He was monetizing a handful of celebrities’ Facebook pages while working a full-time job, with one foot still in the music business. Fordham, a former LSU football player with a deep roster of talent relationships, heard what Hiott was doing and proposed going into business together. Dermer, who was wrapping up a previous venture and working out of the same office building, became the third partner.

Early clients were Atlanta hip-hop artists like Waka Flocka Flame and T.I., whom the trio helped with meet-and-greets and tour merchandise. 

“They kept coming to us: What else can you do for us?” Fordham says. The founders decided to build an agency around the question Dermer put this way: “What does a marketing agency look like in 15 years, and how can we start to be that answer today?”

The answer came at an unexpected time, when many other businesses were struggling. During the pandemic, brands started moving money from radio and billboard spots into digital spots, Fordham said. 

“This is when TikTok started to really emerge,” he added. Get Engaged pushed clients onto the platform, he said, and their company started picking up Fortune 500 brands.

Get Engaged’s growth has tracked a broader shift in advertising. Social media overtook paid search to become the world’s largest advertising channel by spend, according to WARC Media. WARC forecasts global ad spend will grow 9.1% to $1.3 trillion in 2026, with nearly 80% concentrated in retail media, paid search, and social platforms. Linear TV, meanwhile, accounted for 41.3% of global ad spend in 2013 but was on track to fall to just 12.4% in 2025. 

That growth has meant more hiring. Today, Get Engaged has more than 100 employees across Atlanta, New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles, and a client list that includes DoorDash, Perplexity, Raising Cane’s, Universal Music Group, EA, and Sazerac. Fordham says revenue has grown 40% year over year. No layoffs will result from the partnership, the founders said.

“There’s this point of inflection when you flip that model and people start to come to you because they’ve heard of a campaign you’ve run or a big moment you’ve been a part of,” Dermer said.

This February, DoorDash’s 50 Cent campaign—a social-first push in which the rapper pulled items out of a delivery bag in thinly veiled jabs at Sean “Diddy” Combs and others—launched ahead of Super Bowl LX without a national in-game buy and became one of the most dissected ads of the game. 

“To really impact culture, you have to understand how to drive content around the internet,” Dermer said. “You have to understand where conversations start on the internet.”

Why SAMY

The founders say inbound interest had been building, but SAMY stood out. The Madrid-founded company has roughly 1,200 employees across North America, Europe, Asia, and Latin America, and is majority-owned by private equity firm Bridgepoint. The Raine Group advised Get Engaged.

“We weren’t looking for someone to come in and fix what we had built,” Hiott said. “It’s not about correction—it’s about connection.”

The Get Engaged brand will still exist and operate as SAMY’s U.S. arm. Dermer credits a kinship with SAMY cofounders Patricia Ratia Garcia-Oliveros and Marta Nicolas: “There’s a human component to this. At the end of the day, as you build to impact and to truly market, you have to get down to the fundamental human level of connection.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com