Kawal Gandhi has joined Australian-founded AI-powered market research and testing platform Heatseeker as its new CTO, after spending 20 years with Google, leading generative AI initiatives across Cloud, Ads, and Commerce.
Gandhi’s move to Heatseeker comes as brands increasingly shift away from traditional survey-based research towards AI-driven experimentation to validate consumer behaviour faster.
While traditional market research relies on surveys that ask consumers what they think they might do, Heatseeker measures what they do. Instead of questionnaires, the platform runs live behavioural experiments using ‘ghost ads’ on social media to track real-world actions like clicks and sign-ups.
This provides businesses with hard evidence of market demand in days rather than months. Heat Seeker’s current clients include big global names such as Cisco, DoorDash and L’Oréal.
‘Brands are wasting a lot of budget’
Speaking to B&T, Gandhi highlighted the current inefficiencies of traditional market research, where campaigns are “built on assumptions rather than evidence”.
He said Heatseeker allows brands “to utilise not only the data they have, but also use AI to take autonomous actions and do more experiments in what works and what doesn’t”.
Gandhi explained that much of marketing budgets are wasted on long surveys, agency-led testing, or episodic market research. According to him, those processes are “slow, expensive, and often fail to reflect real consumer behaviour”.
He points to the gap between what consumers say in surveys and how they actually behave. “If you ask a customer a question in a controlled survey environment, the correlation between what they say and what they do is 20 to 30 per cent,” Gandhi said.
Heatseeker’s platform addresses these inefficiencies through real-time behavioural experiments. By running tests on messaging or campaigns, what used to take six weeks or two months can now be done in less than a week.
While similar platforms like Ideally provide rapid, 24-hour insights on customer opinion, Heatseeker captures natural market demand, reducing the gap between stated intent and action within a few days.
“That is the power of speed,” Gandhi added.
AI and automation equals ‘great brand building’
Gandhi argues that marketing must be measurable, iterative and anchored in real-world evidence rather than guesswork.
“The message you’re trying to communicate has always been important, but with today’s short attention spans, testing what actually resonates with your customer matters most,” Gandhi explained.
He pointed to a massive flaw in traditional research: the “say/do gap”.
When customers are asked questions in controlled surveys, the correlation between what they say and what they actually do is a dismal 20 to 30 per cent. While traditional methods often leave brands relying on data that is “months or even years out of date,” Heatseeker said it provides always-on insights.
“By running live behavioural experiments, marketers can test messaging, features, or pricing in near-real time—shrinking a process that once took two months down to less than a week.”
‘It’s a mind shift’
Gandhi emphasised that adopting AI-driven market research is as much cultural as it is technological.
“It’s a mind shift. You have to let go of the legacy muscle, and instead, run experiments, look at data, and iterate,” he told B&T.
Heatseeker is designed for marketers to take control of experimentation. “Everyone is empowered—the CMO, brand manager, or campaign owner – to run an experiment, aggregate the data in a couple of hours, and get a report on how the message is going to resonate,” Gandhi explained.
The platform also learns alongside its users.
“The more you engage with it, the more it understands what are the things that you care about,” he said, enabling campaigns to become more predictive over time.
Gandhi highlighted this Heatseeker’s approach as “super critical” for balancing performance marketing with long-term brand equity.
