CANNES — Rosie O'Meara, CEO of GroundTruth, announced during an ADWEEK House Cannes Lions panel that ZeroToOne.AI acquired GroundTruth. The panel, co-hosted by ADWEEK and GroundTruth, also featured discussions on in-store shopping behavior and predictive targeting strategies.

GroundTruth tracks real-world movement and uses a large predictive behavioral model. O'Meara stated, "Where you go in the physical world, we have always believed, is who you really are as a consumer." She added that the company can predict consumer actions with 90% accuracy, stating, "With 90% accuracy, we can understand what you are likely to do next, when you're likely to do it, and also what you're not likely to do next, which also eliminates waste."

Katie Comerford, president of commerce and transformation at Horizon Media, also participated in the panel. Horizon Media recently assisted SharkNinja in launching a slushy machine. Comerford said, "I think there's a demand to try products in-person and not just trust, 'I'm gonna buy it online, and I'll get it shipped to me.'"

O'Meara reported, "We're seeing that a majority of purchases still happen in store, and that includes Gen Z for sure." Comerford discussed tailoring campaigns, noting that for the slushy machine launch, "It was about to be summer, so we went after the frosé sentiment—you know, everybody loves frosé. But what else could you do, knowing Gen Z are not huge drinkers, unlike millennials," Comerford explained. "So, we went in both routes to make sure we were personalizing, but driving that virality to win that limited counter space."

O'Meara also discussed using household-level, user-level, or person-level data to help target and engage customers, saying, "Make household level data, user level data, or person level data, so that they can better target, reach, and engage with those customers." Comerford commented on the challenge of brand perception, adding, "With Reddit being a huge source of that information, there's limited control over what the answer engines are going to pick up and say about your brand."