Kantar has launched ConceptEvaluate AI, an AI-driven service designed to assist businesses in the early-stage evaluation of product and service development.

The service aims to facilitate the screening of new product and service concepts at scale, supporting R&D and innovation teams throughout the development process.

ConceptEvaluate AI utilises a proprietary dataset of nearly 40,000 real-life innovation tests and over six million consumer product evaluations. The AI model has been validated against past survey-based results when predicting outcomes for product and service trials.

The tool, available on Kantar Marketplace, can test between 10 and 100 concepts in as little as 24 hours. This accelerates the time-to-market and opens new growth avenues in various sectors, including FMCG, technology, and financial services.

"With the capability to simultaneously test 10-100 concepts in as little as 24 hours, ConceptEvaluate AI creates space for more innovative thinking, fast-tracks time-to-market and opens new growth avenues in a broad range of categories including FMCG, technology and financial services. As an automated tool with no consumer or survey panel interaction, it also tests sensitive concepts," said Nikki Davey, Head of Innovation for Kantar in Australia.

The tool is designed to alleviate the pressure on innovators to deliver new products and services that resonate with consumers. "ConceptEvaluate AI is all about helping ease this pressure, providing an AI-powered method to developing effective innovation that aligns with what consumers want and need. By accelerating the initial phase of the innovation process, we can provide robust early evidence that a concept has the potential for in-market success," Davey added.

Ashok Kalidas, Kantar’s newly announced Global Chief AI Scientist, emphasised the quality of the AI tools. "Not all AI tools are created equal. The combination of superior training data, a powerful model architecture and rigorous quantitative and qualitative validation of the AI model gives us confidence that we will add enormous value to clients seeking to innovate for growth. ConceptEvaluate AI gives brands the creative license to translate winning ideas into fully formed concepts, knowing there’s meaningful evidence to understand what will work best."

With this launch, Kantar said it now boasts a portfolio of AI-based solutions addressing every phase of the sales and marketing lifecycle.

"Marketing leaders of all levels must become fluent in AI. Our experience as an indispensable partner to thousands of the world’s biggest brands means can help them understand how great quality data and AI tools can support their goal to become meaningfully different to more people," Kalidas concluded.