Explainer
"Test Your Ad" is both a plain-English wish and System1's product name. If you got here wanting the first one — to actually put your ad through a test, today, without a sales cycle — this page covers what System1's platform does, who it's built for, and the self-serve route for everyone else.
System1 shows your finished ad to panels of real people and measures emotional response as the ad plays, then rolls the results into ratings — most famously the star rating, which their research links to long-term brand growth. It's the platform behind the Super Bowl and Christmas ad rankings you see in the trade press every year, and it's strongest exactly there: brand-building creative, TV budgets, and boardroom decisions that need a human-validated emotional read.
Access runs through a sales conversation, and each test carries real fieldwork underneath — human respondents get recruited and paid. That puts it in brand-budget territory with research-timeline turnaround, which is the right shape for a hero TV spot and the wrong shape for this week's batch of feed variants. The full cost picture: System1 pricing guide; the comparison: PreTestAds vs System1.
If what you wanted was the verb — upload the ad, get the verdict — that's the self-serve tier of this category. PreTestAds scores any finished ad (filmed, designed, or AI-generated) with AdCortex™, trained on fMRI brain-response data: a 0–100 percentile against 76 top-performing TikTok ads, Hook Strength, the full attention curve, and the exact second viewers bail. Minutes per test, about $2.45 each, up to 8 free credits, no demo call anywhere in the flow.
System1 measures how people feel about an ad they watched; an attention model predicts whether feed viewers keep watching at all. In a paid feed the second question comes first — the swipe decision takes seconds, before any emotional arc can land. The honest split: use attention screening as the cheap gate on every cut, and panel emotion measurement where brand stakes justify fieldwork. Neither tool claims the other's job — ours says so in writing.
Upload it now and see the score in minutes — up to 8 free credits, no credit card, no sales call.
Test Your Ad Freeor read a live sample report first — no signup
Test Your Ad is System1's ad-testing platform: finished ads are shown to human panels, emotional response is measured moment by moment, and results are summarized in ratings — most famously the star rating, validated against long-term brand growth. It's the platform behind their public Super Bowl and Christmas ad rankings.
If you searched 'test your ad' wanting to actually test one today: self-serve attention scoring exists. Upload a video or image to PreTestAds and get a 0–100 percentile score, hook strength, and the exact drop-off second in minutes — about $2.45 per test, up to 8 free credits, no sales call. It measures predicted attention, not panel emotion.
A star rating summarizes how a human panel felt about an ad, validated against long-term brand growth. An attention score predicts whether feed viewers keep watching at all, second by second. Emotion assumes the watch happened; attention measures whether it does. Many teams treat attention as the gate and emotion as the diagnosis.