Rob Hall. Credit: Parallel
Rob Hall, co-founder of Playground xyz, has launched Parallel, an adtech platform built around what he calls "Customer Suitability", a media buying approach using AI-generated digital twins to score ad resonance before an impression is served.
Hall sold Playground xyz to GumGum in 2021. Parallel has raised AU$4 million in seed funding from Sydney venture capital firm Shearwater Capital and launches across Sydney and London with six staff.
The platform uses synthetic consumer replicas to simulate how different customer segments will respond to an ad in a given content environment, assigning each combination a resonance score used to optimise media buys in real time.
Parallel claims 80.4% accuracy against real human responses.
"Today, impressions are checked for brand safety and brand suitability, but never for whether they're right for the customer," Hall said.
"That's customer suitability, the missing piece, and the one Parallel set out to solve. Using the customer's voice as a signal adds huge value to the millions of activation decisions brands make every day.
“Delivered via human-calibrated digital twins, we simulate and score the resonance between a customer, an ad and the content it runs against then push that into real-time activation."
Hall said back tests showed gains across media metrics, brand lift and conversion rates.
"We're on the first step of a big journey but, as we hoped, our notion of Customer Suitability, in addition to driving more positive advertising generally, can also be linked to positive outcomes,” he said.
“Happily, it seems that what works for your customers works for your brand too.”
Shearwater Capital managing partner Zac Zavos, who also backed Playground xyz, said Hall had made a breakthrough for brand advertisers.
"Customer Suitability is the ideal metric to optimise toward right now," Zavos said.
The Sydney team includes Jono Mullins as CTO, Scot Liddell as COO and Karan Kent as commercial director.
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