System1 puts a price on how an ad makes you feel

Ruby the kangaroo had a dress rehearsal before she invited the world to Australia. Tourism Australia tested versions of its animated campaign with System1, asking audiences to respond before the finished advertising went into circulation. The animatic earned 4.0 stars. The final advertisement reached 5.6 in the United Kingdom. For a company selling confidence in creative decisions, an improving kangaroo is a useful exhibit.

System1 occupies the awkward space between the people who make advertising and the people who approve its budget. One group has a story to tell; the other wants evidence that the story will earn its keep. The London business sells research, software and advice intended to help both groups understand what an audience feels, recognises and might do next.

The proposition is easy to remember: “The more people feel, the more they buy.” Turning that sentence into a dependable business has been less straightforward. System1 has rebuilt itself around standardised testing, endured uneven customer spending and, in August 2026, launched an AI screening product while resisting a takeover offer. The company that judges creative potential is having its own potential argued over.

A kangaroo gets a dress rehearsal

Tourism Australia’s “Come and Say G’Day” campaign gave Ruby, an animated souvenir kangaroo, a travelling companion in Louie, a toy unicorn. Familiar landmarks and music established the destination. The characters supplied a reason to watch. Research into the country’s brand codes had already identified kangaroos as a particularly recognisable asset.

System1 tested versions during development, helping the tourism organisation assess the work across markets. Its published case study reports five-star results in the United States and Singapore as well as the higher UK score. Those are predictions from the testing system, rather than a calculation of tourism revenue caused by the advertisement. The distinction keeps an appealing example from becoming an implausible promise.

“We wanted to reward viewers with a great story that would capture hearts and minds,” Tourism Australia chief marketing officer Susan Coghill said. The practical lesson is in the sequencing: test while decisions remain open. A report delivered after the final edit and the media booking has fewer opportunities to earn its fee.

The audience is allowed to disagree

Boots used that approach for its 2022 Christmas campaign. Actor Lydia West discovers glasses that reveal magical festive scenes, accompanied by Hall & Oates. System1 was involved from storyboard through editing. The final advertisement scored 5.2 stars, 1.8 points above the previous year’s campaign, according to the company’s case study.

This is a concrete use for creative research: expose the work to people outside the room, then revise it. It gives a marketing director something more useful than another internal vote on whether the music is annoying. It also gives an agency evidence for keeping an idea that colleagues have become tired of seeing.

The audience does not necessarily share advertising’s professional enthusiasms. System1’s test of Burger King’s Moldy Whopper campaign, which showed a burger decaying to communicate the absence of artificial preservatives, returned 1.0 stars and a strong disgust response. That result described the reaction its method measured. It did not settle every question about the campaign’s publicity value or strategic purpose.

A test is most useful while there is still something left to change.

The lesson from the development work

Nor does familiarity automatically spoil an advertisement. When IKEA revived its “Start the Car” commercial roughly two decades after its debut, System1 reported 4.3 stars and strong recognition. The sensible question before commissioning a replacement is whether customers have exhausted the entertainment, or the marketing department has exhausted its patience.

From BrainJuicer to the budget meeting

Founder John Kearon came to research with experience on several sides of the table: Unilever, advertising agency Publicis and his product-development business Brand Genetics. BrainJuicer’s admission document says he found conventional research slow, expensive and caught between the depth of qualitative work and the accuracy sought in quantitative studies.

The document dates the business’s founding to December 1999, although current company biographies generally use 2000. Its early software organised open-ended responses within online surveys. BrainJuicer listed on AIM in 2006 and adopted the System1 name in 2017, making its interest in fast, intuitive decision-making part of the sign above the door.

Kearon’s biography includes a detail unlikely to appear in a procurement questionnaire: he installed a Saturday Night Fever dance floor in a previous office. The company presents playfulness and inventiveness as part of its culture; its careers material also stresses learning and collaboration and displays Great Place to Work certification. A dance floor is a better illustration of the intended atmosphere than another abstract corporate value.

Today, brand managers, consumer-insight specialists, agencies and product developers are the buyers. Customers featured publicly range from Boots and Tourism Australia to Pfizer and Life360. System1 sits inside the creative decision process, helping teams choose and improve material that other businesses will produce, distribute and place in front of consumers.

Three scores, three different jobs

Test Your Ad separates questions that are easy to blur together. Its Star Rating estimates long-term growth potential from emotional response. Spike estimates short-term sales potential. Fluency concerns whether people recognise the brand. An entertaining film can still leave viewers unable to name the advertiser; a recognisable advertisement can still leave them cold.

The human-testing offer covers television, digital, social, outdoor, audio and print, with results available from 24 hours. Competitive Edge adds a benchmark database, currently advertised as containing more than 120,000 ads. That accumulated comparison set lets a buyer ask how an execution performs against its category, rather than merely whether a score looks respectable in isolation.

Test Your Innovation extends the approach to ideas, using emotional responses and an exercise in which respondents “invest” in concepts they expect to succeed. Test Your Pack examines packaging, including shelf findability and attention. Test Your Brand follows Fame, Feeling and Fluency over time. Expert Guidance supplies interpretation and suggested changes when a dashboard leaves a team asking what to do on Monday.

Kantar’s LINK products and Zappi’s advertising system compete for similar decisions. Both also offer ways to evaluate creative and connect research to business outcomes. System1’s particular emphasis is emotion, coupled with a memorable scoring vocabulary and a large archive of comparable work. Speed and prediction alone are increasingly shared selling points.

The expensive part of becoming repeatable

The transition from research projects to a platform exposed a commercial problem before it produced a tidy growth story. In FY2023, bespoke consultancy revenue fell 48% to £6.0 million. Platform revenue rose 40% to £17.4 million, but total revenue still slipped 3%. The new business was growing while the older one contracted.

A strategic review reinforced the automated offer and sharpened the focus on large advertisers. Management pointed to customer buying behaviour and problems in the US operation when explaining the changes. The company reported £4 million of cash investment in platforms, products and intellectual property that year. Automation required real expenditure before it could make research more repeatable.

By FY2025, revenue had reached £37.4 million, up 25%. FY2026 was a reminder that scale does not abolish exposure to advertising budgets: revenue eased to £37.0 million and pretax profit fell 60% to £2.1 million. Management described cautious client spending and revised investment plans. Operating costs rose to £30.4 million; efficiency measures delivered £1 million in annualised savings.

Customers pay for testing and advice, with subscriptions also providing access to the advertising database. The reported platform category includes data-led consultancy, so treating all of it as recurring software subscription revenue would flatter the model. For a prospective buyer, the relevant cost comparison includes the test, the revisions it prompts and the media expenditure at stake. A test commissioned without room for revisions has a narrower job.

Ten minutes, with conditions attached

On August 27, 2026, System1 launched Test Your Ad Screen. Trained on 18 million human emotional responses, it can screen up to 100 finished long-form assets at a time in approximately ten minutes. It returns directional ranges, allowing teams to narrow a pile of finished versions before commissioning deeper consumer research.

The launch scope matters: finished long-form creative in the US and UK. Buyers should check suitability before applying the same promise to a storyboard, another country or a short social clip. The speed is useful because it changes how much work can be screened, but the output remains an estimate built from prior responses.

For social advertising, System1 and TikTok have conducted separate research involving 887 ads and more than 92,000 users, matched to over 350 in-market studies. Among its findings is the importance of early branding. That is an actionable adjustment for a team whose audience can swipe away before a conventional end-frame reveals who paid.

The broader limits are commercial. Creative research cannot supply missing distribution, fix an uncompetitive price or make inadequate reach sufficient. System1 and Effie’s Creative Dividend report explicitly identifies factors outside the campaign inputs it studies, including product quality and physical distribution. Read a rating alongside the conditions under which the advertisement will actually run.

The next verdict is on System1

The company’s next chapter is also a dispute about value. Brave Bison posted its offer document on August 27, 2026. The following day, System1’s board reiterated its rejection of both the cash-and-share offer and the all-share alternative, arguing that neither represented acceptable fair value. As of September 7, the offer remained contested.

For marketers, the useful habit survives the corporate drama: let customers into the creative process early, measure whether they recognise the brand and keep commercial outcomes separate from attractive test scores. Ruby earned her stars before the campaign travelled. The point of the exercise was to give the people sending her abroad a better basis for their decision.