System1 has launched Test Your Ad Screen, an AI tool that screens long-form advertising creative. It is trained on 18 million human emotional responses.
The product is aimed at marketers handling large volumes of finished advertising assets. It can screen up to 100 long-form ads at a time and deliver effectiveness predictions within minutes.
Test Your Ad Screen sits alongside the company's existing Test Your Ad product, which uses research with human audiences to assess creative work in more detail. The new tool is designed as an earlier filter, helping brands decide which assets may merit media investment and which may need further testing.
Rather than producing precise scores, the system returns low, medium and high bands across what System1 describes as key diagnostics. The company says this is meant to provide a directional view of likely commercial impact against category and emotional benchmarks.
System1 says the screening output matches human testing nine times out of 10. It also says the tool will not display a result if it lacks enough confidence in the prediction.
Two-stage process
System1 is positioning the launch as part of a two-step approach to creative evaluation. Marketers can first use the screening product to review a broad set of long-form assets, then use Test Your Ad for more detailed analysis based on responses from real consumers.
That second stage is intended to provide exact diagnostics and qualitative feedback. The approach reflects a broader push across advertising and marketing to use AI for speed while retaining human-based research for higher-confidence decisions.
At the centre of the new tool is the company's Test Your Ad Competitive Edge platform, which contains a large database of consumer emotional response norms. According to System1, the database has been built from millions of real responses to advertising and is used to support predictions tied to long-term brand growth, sales and profit.
The launch also highlights how ad testing companies are trying to distinguish their AI products from systems trained only on synthetic or inferred data. System1 argues that predictions linked to observed human emotional reactions offer a more reliable basis for judging likely advertising performance.
For clients, the practical appeal is speed and scale. Marketing teams often need to assess many versions of campaign work across channels, formats and audiences while making media spending decisions to tight deadlines.
Andrew Tindall, Chief Growth Officer, Advertising, at System1, outlined that use case in comments accompanying the launch. "Marketing teams today are faced with delivering an ever-increasing number of creative assets. Test Your Ad Screen helps them make more decisions faster and more regularly, with accurate and predictive data in minutes. This enables brands to understand creative quality and make better informed decisions about where media spend should be allocated," said Tindall.
Market rollout
The product is available through System1's online platform in the US and the UK for long-form assets. Additional markets and media channels will be added later, the company says.
System1 operates in 81 markets globally and has offices across the UK, Europe, North America, Brazil, Singapore and Australia. Its products include Test Your Ad, Test Your Innovation and Test Your Brand, all centred on measuring creative or brand impact through emotional response and related indicators.
System1 also says it has a database of more than 100,000 ads, allowing brands to compare their advertising with competitors. That comparative data has become increasingly important as advertisers seek evidence that creative work is likely to stand out and deliver a return on media spending.
James Gregory, Chief Executive Officer, set out the company's view on the role of AI in advertising research. "We believe the future of creative effectiveness lies in combining AI with real human understanding. Test Your Ad Screen is built on millions of real human emotional responses, not synthetic data or assumptions, helping marketers screen creative quickly while staying grounded in how people actually feel. This is not a replacement for human testing, but a complement to it, and an important next step for System1 in bringing AI and human emotion together," said Gregory.