Driving QSR Growth With AI-Powered Media Measurement on AWS

Discover how Publicis Sapient and Starcom built an AI-powered paid media measurement platform on AWS to help a global QSR optimize campaigns, increase in-store visits and drive smarter, faster growth.

For quick-service restaurants (QSRs), paid media plays a critical role in acquiring, growing and retaining customers. But as campaigns grow more complex and options expand across display, video, TV and programmatic channels, marketers are under pressure to optimize creative, audience and spend decisions in real time. Traditional analytical methods can’t deliver the granularity or speed required to truly understand what’s working.

To solve this, Publicis Sapient and Starcom partnered to build Aperture—a powerful, AI-driven media measurement and optimization platform built on AWS. The system brings together first-party data from the brand, third-party exposure data from media partners, demographic and geo-location data and identity resolution services. AWS provides the backbone: cloud-based storage, AI infrastructure, clean room capabilities and Spark processing power. Together, these elements enable large-scale, privacy-compliant media analysis with the precision needed for campaign success.

Aperture goes beyond dashboards and query tools. It features custom-built AI algorithms and a test-and-learn approach that estimates the incremental contribution of media and creative elements—by channel, audience and creative asset. With person-level insights and high-frequency reporting, the platform empowers marketers to make informed adjustments mid-campaign and improve media ROI.

The platform’s architecture includes:

• AWS cloud, clean room, and identity resolution tools
• Exposure logs from publishers
• Identity data via LiveRamp
• Demographic data from Experian
• Foot traffic data from a geolocation provider
• AI modeling by Publicis Sapient

In a highly competitive industry, increasing in-store visits is a key growth objective. One QSR brand we worked with set “incremental in-store guest visits” as its primary success metric. Aperture was designed to support this goal by providing frequent, actionable performance insights at the creative and audience level—quick enough to drive in-flight campaign optimization.

The system brings full transparency to the media measurement process—from data acquisition, to processing, to results publishing—enabling agile, data-driven decision-making.

Aperture is future-ready. With generative AI capabilities layered into the platform, analysts can explore campaign outcomes using natural language prompts—no coding required. Whether asking which campaign delivered the highest lift or simulating a new audience strategy, teams can get answers in real time and test multiple scenarios simultaneously.

As AWS continues to evolve its clean room and AI technology, the platform will support even more advanced collaboration between advertisers and media partners. Aperture is already positioned to take advantage of these advancements.

Aperture has transformed the QSR brand’s paid media strategy—from reactive reporting to real-time, AI-powered optimization. It’s a blueprint for modern media measurement, where cloud, data and AI converge to drive smarter marketing and measurable business impact.