From big bets to lots of little: Why we built Amplify AI

When we started thinking about the next evolution of Amplify, we didn't begin with AI. We began with our customers.

Over the past year, one theme kept coming up in conversations. Customers weren't struggling to test their biggest advertising decisions – they were struggling to keep up with everything in between.

For decades, advertising was built around a handful of big bets. Brands invested heavily behind one or two hero campaigns, making it worthwhile to spend time understanding how consumers would respond before going to market.

That's still true for big moments, but it isn't where most marketing happens anymore.

Today's campaigns are made up of dozens—or even hundreds—of creative assets across social, digital and creator channels. Instead of a few high-impact moments, brands are managing what many in the industry are describing as "lots of little": hundreds of smaller interactions that collectively shape how consumers experience a brand.

The consequence isn't just more creative. It's more decisions. Every new asset, channel and audience variation creates another question: Should we run it? Should we invest behind it? Is it reinforcing the brand the way we intended?

When we asked customers how much of that creative was actually being tested with consumers, the answer surprised us. Many estimated they only optimize and validate around 5–10% of the creative they were investing media behind. Not because they didn't value consumer research, but because there simply wasn't a practical way to apply it at that scale.

As a company whose mission is to bring brands closer to the people they serve, that felt like the wrong outcome. The question became: How do we help marketers bring consumer understanding into the other 90% of decisions?

The answer wasn't replacing consumer research. It was extending it—using AI to bring everything brands already know about consumers into far more creative decisions.

One thing became clear as we explored the problem: not every creative decision carries the same level of risk.

Your hero campaign or creative asset – the work introducing a new brand platform, product or campaign idea – still deserves the depth and confidence that comes from speaking directly to real consumers.

But the hundreds of supporting social video, creator assets and other digital video executions that follow are different. Individually, they're lower-risk decisions. Collectively, they represent a significant share of marketing investment.

Those decisions deserve consumer insight too. Just not necessarily the same approach.

That's how we think about Amplify today.

We're extending that vision with Amplify AI and the new Amplify Hub. Together, they help marketers bring trusted consumer understanding to the many creative decisions that have historically gone untested, while connecting learnings across campaigns, channels and markets in a single system.

Human research continues to help marketers get the foundations right. Amplify AI extends trusted consumer understanding across the many smaller creative decisions that have historically gone untested. And the new Amplify Hub connects those learnings across campaigns, channels and markets, so brands don't just evaluate ads—they build a system that gets smarter over time.

When we decided to build Amplify AI, we had one principle from the very beginning: it’s a modality of consumer understanding, not a replacement.

We've never believed the value of research comes from collecting data alone. It comes from building an understanding of consumers over time. Every study, every campaign and every learning adds to that picture.

The opportunity we saw with AI wasn't to start over. It was to put that accumulated knowledge to work in more places.

That's why Amplify AI is built on the same advertising methodology used and trusted by iconic brands like PepsiCo, Kraft Heinz, Colgate Palmolive and Ferrara candy. It's grounded in more than one million real consumer survey responses and uses the same validated 3Rs advertising framework as the rest of the Amplify system. 

The result is a different kind of AI. One that's designed to help marketers understand not only what consumers are likely to do, but why a piece of creative is likely to succeed – and how it maps back to the brand.

The results gave us confidence we were on the right path. In validation across hundreds of advertising studies, Amplify AI matched human survey results with 84% accuracy, giving marketers a trusted way to evaluate high volumes of creative before investing media dollars.

As Matt Slater, Associate Director of Consumer Insights at Kraft Heinz, put it:

"When asset volume makes traditional testing impractical, Zappi's Amplify AI helps us bridge the gap so we're informed, not guessing. It surfaces what's likely to work and why, helping us make better campaign decisions. That's consistent with how we use AI across Kraft Heinz—we treat AI as a co-pilot to accelerate learning and problem-solving while keeping humans accountable for the final decisions."

- Matt Slater, Associate Director, Consumer Insights at Kraft Heinz

We're incredibly proud of what the team has built, but even more excited about what it makes possible. Every campaign teaches brands something about their consumers. Our goal is to make sure those learnings don't live in individual projects—they become part of a connected system that informs every decision that follows.

That's always been our mission at Zappi: bringing brands closer to the people they serve. Amplify AI is another step toward that vision, helping marketers bring trusted consumer understanding into far more of the decisions that shape how brands grow.

Learn more about Amplify AI and the new Amplify Hub, and see how brands are bringing trusted consumer understanding to every creative decision.