Kantar Upgrades LINK to Guide Early-Stage Creative

Kantar has announced enhancements to its LINK portfolio, allowing clients to evaluate multiple creative concepts quickly and efficiently, and to predict ad performance before production begins.

The LINK portfolio, originally a Millward Brown product and one of the world's best-known research suites, predicts how well advertising will build brand predisposition and drive sales. The new capabilities combine survey research, qual expertise and AI-powered analytics to enable marketers to quickly evaluate and nurture early-stage creative ideas.

Kantar says its stats show that early testing of creative concepts increases the likelihood of short-term sales by up to 15%, and believes LINK's new capabilities gives marketers access to 'consistent' insights throughout the creative development process, steering their choices with 'confidence and speed'.

The enhancements allow users of the LINK+ creative effectiveness solution to screen and 'nurture' early-stage creative concepts, evaluating as many as a dozen early-stage creatives side by side, from initial advertising ideas and concepts to scripts and mood films - allowing advertisers to identify winning creative from the offset.

Brands can also now access early creative insights within LINK AI, which inputs simple text-based ad summaries and outputs predictive results based on Kantar's database of over 80,000 ad tests conducted with real people around the world.

The new capabilities are available immediately in Kantar Marketplace, the group's agile market research platform. 'By combining quantitative insights with AI-powered analysis and qualitative expertise' says Duncan Southgate (pictured), the group's Global Creative & Media Lead, 'we can deliver the precision and speed needed for informed early-stage creative decisions. This gives brands and agencies the confidence to refine ideas iteratively and make data-driven choices that truly move the dial. Our LINK portfolio has always connected creativity to outcomes. These new, agile early-stage capabilities will help marketers screen and nurture their most promising ideas to create world-class campaigns'.

Web site: www.kantar.com .