LAS VEGAS — Brand research can be so expensive and time consuming, even the biggest marketers limit themselves to a handful of these interactions a year. As a result, the informed decisions about marketing and advertising based on real-world contact with their consumers are also limited.
Enter TestPilot, which claims to help brands host exponentially more research events at the same cost through artificial intelligence-powered marketplace simulations that deliver results in as little as three days versus several weeks.
“I ask brands, ‘How many research occasions have your people had this year?’ Typically the answer is three, four, or five. That’s not a lot of time talking to the shopper,” Allan Peretz, co-founder and CEO of TestPilot, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at Groceryshop. “What we offer is a chance to change that to 30 or 50 research occasions at the same cost, much faster, and we believe with the same or better quality.”
The platform recreates shopping experiences on Amazon, Walmart, and potentially Target or TikTok Shop, analyzing real shopper behavior through AI to help brands evaluate product potential, price sensitivity, and packaging effectiveness within days rather than weeks or months.
Real shoppers, artificial stores
TestPilot brings actual consumers into simulated retail environments rather than using synthetic shoppers or traditional focus group methodologies, capturing authentic shopping behavior through AI analysis.
“We bring real shoppers into those simulated experiences, not synthetic shoppers, but actual shoppers with hands, feet, arms, legs, heads and brains most importantly,” said Peretz, whose career experience includes stints in the army and over a decade at Procter & Gamble. “We use AI to analyze every click, every pause, everything they do in that shopping experience.”
Brands can set up tests in 15 minutes and receive comprehensive reports by the following Monday for Friday submissions, he said. The research covers questions about everything from product selection, pricing strategies, or packaging changes with conversion and click-through data.
Learning process
The retail and advertising industries view learning as discrete events rather than part of an ongoing operation, Peretz said. That makes it harder for organizations to get more accessible data from across their supply chain.
“We treat learning like an event, but it’s really a process,” Peretz said.
This shift from event-based to process-based learning represents the biggest opportunity for connecting data effectively across organizations, he added.
Multifunctional collaborative access
Collaborative data improves customer experiences when all partners — formulators, marketers, agencies — access the same information simultaneously with the ability to query and clarify in real time.
“Collaborative data is about getting all of your partners together looking at the same thing and being able to query further and ask clarifying questions,” Peretz said. “It’s about multifunctional access to the same information and easy access to that information.”
This product development lens ensures teams work from shared understanding rather than fragmented insights distributed across organizational silos.
AI comes to life
The evolution toward AI employees functioning across operations, analytics, and strategic functions represents a fundamental shift in how humans and artificial intelligence interact within business environments.
“I believe firmly, and I’m already seeing in my own life that the future is really us and AI collaborating as ‘beings,’ not as people and tools, but as beings and shared spaces and shared information,” Peretz said. “From what I could see all around me, that’s a vision that’s coming to life very quickly.”
You’re watching “From Walls to Bridges: The Power of Cross-Functional Data Collaboration”, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at GroceryShop 2025, presented by Epsilon. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
