• Czech Behavio tests companies’ ad options and provides actionable advice
• The startup’s most recent achievements include becoming one of the winners of Vestbee’s CEE Startup Challenge 2023
• The solution is universal for all cultures and languages, and the startup plans international expansion with a focus on North America
• Behavio plans a Seed round in 2024

Among the many year-end events of this December, Vestbee announced the winners of its CEE Startup Challenge 2023. ITKeyMedia highlights the winning startups.

Behavio, the Czech ad performance assessment startup, got the bronze. The startup is de facto a laboratory that tests the performance of ads (at any stage of their development) and provides actionable advice on improving it.

Latest Science to Test Ad Performance

The company was founded in 2015 by a team of childhood friends who had previously worked together on a number of successful projects as they unanimously agreed on the need for disruption in both methodological and technological aspects of ad research.

Behavio’s research employs the most recent findings in marketing and behavioral science. The implicit association test allows the researchers to peek into the audiences’ subconscious, and a robust 500+ respondent sample delivers accurate and valuable insights. Notably, Behavio works with marketing ideas at any stage of their development.

‘You could be planning a marketing campaign, are in the process of creating one, or are curious whether your potential ideas are good enough to make an impact. It doesn’t matter how finalized your creatives are. You can test pretty much anything. Concepts, storyboards, animations, key visuals, final videos… you name it, we test it! You upload your creative into our platform and receive results in a matter of days. The report includes information about how effective your creative is, what the viewers think about it, and most importantly – what can be improved,’ Behavio’s co-founder and sales and operations director Marek Nebesář explains.

‘Task, Don’t Ask’

Notably, Behavio’s methods by design cannot compromise a research subject’s privacy. Mr Nebesář insists that with their method, all data is pseudonymized and reported only in groups. Not even the researchers can link particular answers to their authors. The data is then analyzed with our algorithms and reported into the clients’ dashboards.

The team chooses to call the method ‘Task, don’t ask.’ It means that instead of looking for declarations from respondents, the research seeks out answers that correlate more with their behavior. This employs their fast thinking, e.g. the way humans think when in a shopping decision.

‘The issue with classic questionnaires that ask is that people employ their slow thinking, even though they would otherwise use its fast counterpart. After all, 95 percent of all our daily decisions happen in the fast thinking part of our brain,’ Mr Nebesář points out.

The well-known Czech VC Presto Ventures is among Behavio’s investors. The Presto team has been following Behavio’s founders and their research on the subconscious brand metrics assessment, bringing them toward brand marketing ROI predictability, for several years.

‘When Behavio approached us with their vision to build a fully automated research platform for enterprise clients, our decision to invest was a natural progression of our relationship. Their solution has great potential to change the way Fortune 500 companies measure their ROI on creative advertising and also equip mid-market enterprises with testing capabilities that had previously only been available for established billion-dollar companies,’ Presto Ventures’ associate Matej Luhovy tells ITKeyMedia.

Universal Application

Seeing how Behavio works with all types of ads on all stages of finalization, the performance of Behavio itself varies significantly between projects. Additionally, the startup provides its clients with actionable insights to improve their ad creatives, but it’s up to them to go through with these recommendations and make changes in their campaigns.

Mr Nebesář shares an example: ‘The client had three different TV ads and wanted to make sure they would all perform well once on air. It was fortunate that they decided to test – while two of the variants excelled, the last one scored more than three times lower! Therefore, the client scrapped the most underperforming video and used their media time for only the best two videos. Consistent with pre-testing results, the best ad proved twice as effective as the second one. The campaign was a big success, increasing the brand’s mental availability among viewers by 20%.’ More of Behavio’s case studies can be found in the company’s blog.

Mr Nebesář claims that Behavio’s solution works equally well for all geographies and languages because the methodology is universal – after all, the human brain works the same no matter its origin. The technology itself is compatible with most of the global market. From the ground up, the service can be up and running within one to two weeks.

As such, Behavio’s ambition for 2024 focuses on amping up its well-oiled sales machine and growing international presence, including laying the foundations for a US team. Additionally, the company plans a Seed round, further automation to enhance customer experience, and exploring upsell and cross-sell opportunities.