CART Index AI launches to close creative effectiveness gap in retail media

Creative is the single biggest driver of campaign ROI, accounting for up to 70% of performance, according to Analytic Partners. Yet fewer than half of marketers test creative and in retail media, testing is almost non-existent. With retail media forecast to reach $2.6–3B in Australia by 2026–27, that blind spot is especially costly.

That’s why Gary Head, former General Manager of Omnichannel at Mars United Commerce ANZ (Publicis Groupe) and Company Secretary of industry body Shop! ANZ created CART Index: an AI platform built specifically to test and optimise retail media and shopper creative before it hits the market.

Head helped grow XPO Brands from a three-person start-up into one of ANZ’s most awarded independents. Following its acquisition by The Mars Agency, Head became Executive Creative and Strategy Director and later General Manager. In that role, he led award-winning omnichannel campaigns and spearheaded the global rebrand to Mars United Commerce ahead of its Publicis Groupe acquisition in 2024.

A 2025 TripleLift study found 82% of marketers say high-quality creative is essential to campaign success, yet more than a third admit they struggle to consistently deliver it.

“Time and again, I’d see two campaigns with similar products and similar media plans deliver vastly different ROI,” says Head. “The missing variable was creative. You can optimise every media metric under the sun, but if the asset that meets the shopper isn’t creatively effective, you’re leaving sales on the table and driving down your ROAS. CART Index helps fix that.”

The platform evaluates creative across four shopper-centric dimensions: attention attraction, message clarity, brand recognition, and trigger power. Marketers upload an asset and receive a CART Index score out of 100, simulated shopper heatmaps, and AI-generated recommendations to strengthen clarity, branding, and calls-to-action.

Early adopters are already putting the platform to work. Sanitarium, maker of Weet-Bix, UP&GO and So Good, is testing and refining creative across Australia and New Zealand, while creative agencies such as Connecting Plots are also using CART Index to review and optimise campaign assets.

“Retail media isn’t just another ad channel, it’s one of the few places left where attention is captive. Shoppers aren’t doom-scrolling; they’re in decision mode, carts open, wallets out. That’s gold. And when the creativity’s good? It doesn’t just ‘show up on shelf.’ It changes behaviour at the shelf. That’s the power of CART Index. We’ve finally got a shared language between creative and media,” said Dave Jansen, Executive Creative Director at Connecting Plots.

Unlike traditional pre-testing methods, which are slow and expensive, CART Index delivers evidence-based feedback in minutes.

“Having CART Index as a third-party validation tool takes all the subjectivity out of creative and provides a clear rationale to defend and optimise our shopper centric execution,” said Helen Vacher, Snr Shopper Marketing Manager at Sanitarium.

The platform is now live, offering free reports to new users to make creative testing faster, easier, and more accessible at Cartindex.ai