Founder-ledBuilt by someone who used to spend €100k per study

About SaliencyLab

I led creative testing
at L'Oréal.
So I automated it.

SaliencyLab is the pre-spend creative intelligence platform built by an insights operator who spent a decade inside the gap it now closes, running Kantar studies in 11+ markets, watching small brands guess because the testing budget never reached them. Now it does.

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Oussama Nakhil

Founder & CEO · SaliencyLab

The journey

From measuring ads to predicting them.

Ten years inside the creative-testing industry: three years agency-side, six years client-side at the world's largest beauty group, then one year building the tool that should have existed all along.

2014

NielsenIQ · Casablanca

Agency-side. Insights for the giants.

Managed a $3M+ FMCG client portfolio: Coca-Cola, Unilever, PepsiCo, L'Oréal. Delivered monthly insight reports across 10+ categories. Saw exactly which questions brands paid the most to answer.

$3M+ portfolio · 10+ categories

2018

L'Oréal · Paris HQ

Client-side. Running Kantar across markets.

Global Consumer Insights Analyst. Led media testing methodology across 500+ campaigns for 6 global brands. Directly managed Kantar in 11+ markets, defining measurement approaches, statistical frameworks, and how the room read the verdict.

500+ campaigns · 11+ markets

2025

SaliencyLab · Paris

Building. The tool that should have existed.

Same five things that always determined whether an ad would work: does it survive the skip, does the message land, does the brand register, does it persuade, does it build memory. Mapped to peer-reviewed science. Run in under 90 seconds.

90 seconds per ad

“

Eighty percent of what determined whether an ad would work was already detectable in the creative itself, before any consumer ever saw it. The big brands paid six figures and waited six weeks to confirm what a model could find in ninety seconds.

Oussama Nakhil

Founder · SaliencyLab

The gap we closed

Same science. Different timeline.

The methodology hasn't changed. What changed is who can afford to run it.

The old world

Recruit. Survey. Wait. Compile.

Six-figure cost per study
Four to eight weeks per round
Reserved for final-stage validation, not iteration
Only the largest brands could afford it
Everyone else guessed

The new world

Upload. Score. Decide. Iterate.

Five KPI scores in under 90 seconds
Used between every edit round, not once before launch
Same five constructs that mattered for the giants
Now reaches DTC brands and agencies the same week

What we believe

Five rules we don't break.

The principles that decide what we ship and what we refuse to.

Truth before polish

No invented metrics. No overclaims. Scores are model predictions, validated against public outcomes, and we say so on every page.

Science, not vibes

Every KPI maps to peer-reviewed work: attention science, cognitive load, brand salience, behavioral psychology. 24 cited papers and counting.

Speed is a feature

Ninety seconds, not six weeks. Iteration only happens when feedback is faster than the next edit.

Built for everyone, not just giants

The DTC founder, the agency creative, the in-house team: same five KPIs, same benchmark frame, same verdict logic. Pricing reflects that.

Recent traction · April 2026

GITEX Africa picked us. So did Morocco.

Selected among 300 startups from across the continent. Demoed RoastIQ to AI engineers, agency owners, and global brand teams on the floor. Came back with conversations that turned into our roadmap.

At the SaliencyLab stand

Three days. Live demos. Real conversations with founders and global brand teams.

Selection ceremony at Savoy Le Grand Hotel Marrakech

Selection · Savoy Marrakech

One of 300 startups picked across Africa.

Demoing RoastIQ to AI engineers and agency owners

Live demo on the floor

RoastIQ scoring real ads in 90 seconds.

DigiTalk · Morocco's biggest digital media

Talking creative intelligence on Morocco's largest digital podcast, full episode in the pipeline.

300

Startups selected from across Africa

29.4K

Views on a single Moroccan-influencer reel

Days demoing live to founders & global teams

11+

Markets the founder ran Kantar in before this

What we built

Three products. One decision ladder.

RoastIQ scores the creative. BuyerLens explains the resistance. Hugo orchestrates both, through one conversation.

Step 1 · Diagnostic

RoastIQ

Pre-spend creative scoring

Upload an ad. Get five KPI scores, a verdict (Scale · Sharpen · Rebuild), benchmark position, and the evidence behind it, in under 90 seconds.

Open RoastIQ

Step 2 · Resistance

BuyerLens

Synthetic buyer interviews

Opens from a saved RoastIQ result. Run structured interviews across buyer personas, and surface the specific tension before the next cut.

Open BuyerLens

Agent · Orchestrator

Hugo

Autonomous AI creative strategist

One conversation. Hugo runs RoastIQ, interviews buyers, queries benchmarks, and shows the reasoning trace, so the recommendation arrives with its receipts.

Meet Hugo

+0.31

Held-out OOS Spearman ρ, TikTok engagement (n=700)

+0.30

5-fold CV, TikTok CTR (n=691)

+0.32

5-fold CV, YouTube view counts (n=403)

6.5×

Pool-wide quintile lift, top vs bottom by predicted score

The science backbone

Validated against 1,200+ ads with public outcome data.

Predictions are cross-validated against public engagement and click-intent signals on TikTok, YouTube, and Meta, never against in-market business outcomes (sales, ROAS, attributed conversion). Scaling curves show ρ growing 2–4× as the cohort expanded; the model is not at saturation.

Co-authored methodology paper in pipeline with Nissrine Khadir (Mohammed V University Rabat, management sciences). Open-source benchmark dataset planned (CC-BY-NC). 24 peer-reviewed papers cited across the five KPIs.

SaliencyLab predicts engagement and click intent, leading indicators. We do not claim to predict in-market sales, ROAS, or brand recall. Heatmaps predict visual attention, not measured eye tracking. Synthetic buyer interviews are scenario simulation, not real consumer panels.