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Armed Forces and scientists are India's most trusted professions: Ipsos. Kantar launches solution to guide customer experience investment. October 6, 2026 Kantar has launched Kantar Experience Impact, powered by the Qualtrics(R) platform. The customer experience solution helps organisations connect customer experiences to brand strength and therefore decide where to invest for growth. Many organisations measure customer experience, brand tracking and operational data separately. As a result they struggle to see which experiences make the biggest impact on their brand. Kantar Experience Impact brings those perspectives together so that leaders can clearly link customer experience decisions to brand outcomes. The solution combines Kantar's Meaningful Different Salient framework, which underpins decades of brand growth research, with Qualtrics' Experience Management Platform(R) to show how experiences strengthen or weaken the perceptions that drive growth. It helps organisations benchmark performance against competitors, pinpoint what's influencing consumers, and choose the actions most likely to strengthen brand equity. For customer experience, marketing and insights leaders, this provides clear decision-making support: * Which touchpoints influence customer perceptions the most * Where competitors are creating strong experiences and how to close those gaps * How to build a compelling case for experience investment that will positively impact brand growth. Unlike traditional CX programmes that focus only on existing customers, Kantar Experience Impact combines the views of customers and non-customers to show how experiences shape brand perceptions across the whole market. It can also be enriched with voice of customer, operational and brand data so that organisations can understand what is happening and why. Early deployments have shown that distinctiveness is won or lost in a small number of moments. In one pilot for a European telco, the perception gap was sharpest among first-year customers, pointing to onboarding as a decisive point in shaping how that brand is judged. Anand Parameswaran, Executive Director and Lead (West India), Kantar, said, "Kantar Experience Impact, powered by Qualtrics, represents a significant step forward in helping organisations connect brand and customer experience through a common language. By combining Kantar's Meaningfully Different framework with Qualtrics' technology, it provides a clearer understanding of the experiences that shape perceptions and drive meaningful differentiation. "For clients, this means moving beyond isolated CX metrics to a holistic view of how experiences influence brand equity, supported by richer signals, AI-powered insights, and clearer guidance on the moments that matter most. The result is a practical roadmap that helps turn customer feedback into action, linking experience improvements to stronger brand growth and commercial impact. Improved experiences are more likely to increase a brand's market share by 2.5x," Parameswaran said. Adam Block, Chief Sales Officer, Qualtrics, said, "For too long, CX and brand teams have worked from different playbooks. Kantar Experience Impact brings them together. By pairing Kantar's proven understanding of how brands grow with Qualtrics' industry-leading Experience Management Platform, we're giving organisations an integrated view of how every interaction shapes the way their brand is perceived, and the confidence to act on it. It's a great example of what Kantar and Qualtrics can achieve together, and we're proud to bring it to market on World CX Day." Kantar Experience Impact has been developed in partnership with Qualtrics and is available through the Qualtrics platform and marketplace. It supports sectors where customer experience strongly influences growth, including retail, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, travel and hospitality, and any category where customer experience plays a critical role in growth.

Kantar launches Experience Impact to link customer experience with brand growth. The solution, powered by Qualtrics, helps organisations identify experiences that strengthen brand perceptions, benchmark competitors and prioritise investments. Reading Time: 2 mins read Mumbai: Kantar has launched Kantar Experience Impact, powered by the Qualtrics platform, a customer experience solution designed to help organisations connect customer experiences with brand strength and identify areas where investments can drive growth. The solution addresses a common challenge for organisations that measure customer experience, brand tracking and operational data separately, making it difficult to determine which experiences have the greatest impact on brand performance. Kantar Experience Impact brings these perspectives together by combining Kantar's Meaningfully Different Salient framework, which underpins its brand growth research, with Qualtrics' Experience Management Platform. The solution helps organisations assess how customer experiences strengthen or weaken brand perceptions, benchmark performance against competitors and identify actions that can strengthen brand equity. For customer experience, marketing and insights leaders, the solution provides visibility into which touchpoints influence customer perceptions most, where competitors are delivering stronger experiences and how organisations can build a case for experience investments linked to brand growth. Unlike traditional customer experience programmes that primarily focus on existing customers, Kantar Experience Impact incorporates the views of both customers and non-customers. This enables organisations to understand how experiences influence brand perceptions across the broader market. The solution can also incorporate voice-of-customer, operational and brand data, allowing organisations to understand both what is happening and the factors driving those outcomes. Early deployments have indicated that distinctiveness can be won or lost across a small number of critical moments. In a pilot involving a European telecommunications company, the largest perception gap was identified among first-year customers, highlighting onboarding as a key stage in shaping brand perceptions. "Kantar Experience Impact, powered by Qualtrics, represents a significant step forward in helping organisations connect brand and customer experience through a common language. By combining Kantar's Meaningfully Different framework with Qualtrics' technology, it provides a clearer understanding of the experiences that shape perceptions and drive meaningful differentiation. For clients, this means moving beyond isolated CX metrics to a holistic view of how experiences influence brand equity, supported by richer signals, AI-powered insights, and clearer guidance on the moments that matter most. The result is a practical roadmap that helps turn customer feedback into action, linking experience improvements to stronger brand growth and commercial impact. Improved experiences are more likely to increase a brand's market share by 2.5x," said Anand Parameswaran, Executive Director and Lead (West India), Kantar. "For too long, CX and brand teams have worked from different playbooks. Kantar Experience Impact brings them together. By pairing Kantar's proven understanding of how brands grow with Qualtrics' industry-leading Experience Management Platform, we're giving organisations an integrated view of how every interaction shapes the way their brand is perceived, and the confidence to act on it. It's a great example of what Kantar and Qualtrics can achieve together, and we're proud to bring it to market on World CX Day," said Adam Block, Chief Sales Officer, Qualtrics Developed in partnership with Qualtrics, Kantar Experience Impact is available through the Qualtrics platform and marketplace. The solution is aimed at sectors where customer experience has a significant influence on growth, including retail, financial services, telecommunications, healthcare, travel and hospitality.

Marketers have money for AI visibility, but uncertain about right data to deliver growth: Kantar. The Kantar Media Reactions 2026 study finds marketers are ramping up spend on AI assistants and creator content, but consumer trust in AI recommendations remains low as confidence in media planning declines. Marketers are rapidly increasing investment in AI assistants, even though consumers remain cautious about the recommendations they provide. This is according to Kantar's Media Reactions 2026 study, based on and. Almost two-thirds (62 per cent) of marketers expect GenAI to play a pivotal role in brand recommendations and a net 75 per cent plan to increase investment in AI assistants in 2027. However, while the majority of people feel positive about generative AI's possibilities and most already use AI assistants, only 32 per cent of consumers are using them to research brands and products and only 23 per cent trust their recommendations. Many factors could be influencing this lack of trust, including how people feel about AI technology, what they already think about specific brands, the source of AI-generated answers or the way these answers are presented. Understanding and measuring these concerns is critical for marketing investment to pay off. Gonca Bubani, Global Director of Media at Kantar, said, "There's a lot of money moving towards AI on the assumption people will use it the way the industry expects. The reality is that marketers don't yet have a firm grasp of the nuanced feelings people have about AI environments or how they work within their wider media mix. That shouldn't stop them from experimenting with AI, but it does mean they need to carefully test, measure and learn as they invest." Marketers confidence declining; clearer intelligence in demand. As channels such as AI and creator content mature, marketers have become less confident navigating the ever-fragmenting media mix and growing volumes of data: * Only half of advertisers are confident they have the right balance between brand-building and performance marketing (2025: 60 per cent). * 57 per cent of advertisers feel confident their organisation has the right media mix (2025: 64 per cent). * Only 51 per cent feel they are extracting actionable intelligence from their data to support their marketing goals. But this lack of confidence is not all justified. Bubani adds, "Despite their insecurity, marketers are actually getting better at making fragmented channels perform in their favour. Kantar LIFT+ data shows that between 2020 and 2025, 43 per cent of campaign performance came from channels working together, compared with only 18 per cent pre-2014." Paul Zwillenberg, CEO at Kantar, said, "Marketing has never been harder to navigate, right when businesses need every dollar of investment to work harder. AI now shapes how people discover and choose brands, so strong brands have to earn the right to be recommended - by people, and by the machines guiding them. CMOs are investing more in the future, yet growing less certain about the decisions in front of them today. The answer is better intelligence, not more data." Media brand advertising equity, globally. Kantar has introduced new consumer ad preference metric in 2026 which now combines preference with exposure; 2026 performance should not be compared with historic results. For the first time, Kantar's ad equity measure combines consumers' attitudes to advertising on different brand platforms with exposure. This new ranking shows where people are both open to advertising and likely to encounter it, helping advertisers understand which brands offer the strongest mix of consumer acceptance, attention and reach according to consumers. Meanwhile marketers are backing a small group of digital platforms, with Instagram, YouTube and Google ahead of other brands when it comes to trust scores. Bubani said, "Marketer trust is only one side of the picture. Effective media planning also depends on understanding where consumers are receptive to ads. Comparing those perspectives can reveal if marketers are putting too much stock in their own views, or if they are adequately reflecting consumer demand. This is particularly relevant as investment shifts into AI, creators, commerce media and streaming." Creator content shifts from reach to relevance. Planned investment in the creator economy continues to grow, and marketers are looking to shift strategies away from celebrity-level fame to local community depth. Micro-creators (66 per cent) and nano-creators (61 per cent) are the creator types most marketers plan to invest in, ahead of macro- (48 per cent) and mega-influencers (42 per cent). This is a positive step: Kantar's Creator Game Plan found that when using creators, platform engagement and brand building potential only align one third of the time, and predicating creator choice on engagement stats had become a common trap for marketers. Bubani said, "Two thirds of marketers plan to increase their investment in creator content, where success is now less about reach and more about relevance: who opens up the best access to audiences, in a credible context and through stronger creative collaboration." Campaign Middle East has shown that follower count doesn't guarantee effective reach: more important is how creators help brands to communicate their meaningful difference to their audience." Anup Oommen is the Editor of Campaign Middle East at Motivate Media Group, a well-reputed moderator, and a multiple award-winning journalist with more than 15 years of experience at some of the most reputable and credible global news organisations, including Reuters, CNN, and Motivate Media Group. As the Editor of Campaign Middle East, Anup heads market-leading coverage of advertising, media, marketing, PR, events and experiential, digital, the wider creative industries, and more, through the brand's digital, print, events, directories, podcast and video verticals. As such he's a key stakeholder in the Campaign Global brand, the world's leading authority for the advertising, marketing and media industries, which was first published in the UK in 1968.