v0.4 · brain-activity timeline is live

Your next winning ad, backed by brain wave analysis.

Cortex predicts which paid-social ads will win before you spend on them — using a brand-specific neural signature trained on your own winners and losers.

14-day trial · no card · 5 free scorings

CHN 08 · 128 Hz · brand: ebs · winner-bias +0.41live

Trusted by performance teams shipping 10k+ creatives a year

north&co
Halcyon
EBS
::lumen
Praxis/
Marquee
roundtable
The headline screen

Anatomy of a scoring result.

One screen. Three scores. Six brain-network metrics. A narrative. Click a moment to seek.

/halcyon/scorings/scr_3a8f2csucceeded · 2m 14s
FINAL SCORE
76%
0.65 × brand + 0.35 × attention
BRAND WINNER-LIKENESS
78
vs your bank
GENERAL ATTENTION
73
attention pull
CONFIDENCE
82
Solid
0s2s4s6s8s10s12s14s16s18s20s22s
Hook
91
Product Intro
84
Lifestyle
78
Product Demo
58
Testimonial
86
CTA
41
Live · at 9.4s
Attention
100
Focus
81
Desire
68
Decision
50
Self-Relevance
55
Body / Motion
59
How it works

Three steps. Real product. No spreadsheets.

01

Upload winners and losers, per brand.

Drop in the ads you know performed and the ones that didn't. Three of each is the minimum — Cortex learns from your weights, your labels, and your actual creative.

H
halcyon / references
32 references
ready to build
FileRoleWeightLOO
homepage_30s_winner.mp4winner1.0078
founder_long_q4.mp4winner1.0072
ugc_review_15s.mp4winner0.7564
loser_static_text.mp4loser1.0028
ugc_unboxing_old.mp4loser1.0034
founder_v1.mp4loser0.5051
drop videos here to add references
02

A brand-specific signature, validated against itself.

Cortex holds out each reference one at a time and re-scores it. The gap between winner and loser distributions is the proof — and references that disagree with their own label get flagged for review.

signature v4 — leave-one-out validation
clean
AUC
0.91
accuracy
0.84
review
3
23
clean
4
usable
2
borderline
3
review
03

Score a candidate. See exactly where it lands and why.

Final score, brand winner-likeness, attention pull, and confidence — plus a brain-activity timeline, per-moment element scores, and a written narrative pointing at the seconds that drive or drain performance.

founder_intro_v3.mp4succeeded
FINAL SCORE
76%
0.65 × brand + 0.35 × attention
BRAND WINNER-LIKENESS
78
vs your bank
GENERAL ATTENTION
73
attention pull
CONFIDENCE
82
Solid
0s2s4s6s8s10s12s14s16s18s20s22s
Hook
91
Product Intro
84
Lifestyle
78
Product Demo
58
Testimonial
86
CTA
41
Live · at 9.4s
Attention
100
Focus
81
Desire
68
Decision
50
Self-Relevance
55
Body / Motion
59
Plain-English narratives

The brain math, translated into something a creative director can act on.

Every scoring includes a structured analysis — what's working, what's weaker, and concrete recommendations tied to specific seconds of your ad. No neuroscience jargon.

narrative · auto-generatedready
WHAT'S WORKING

The opening hook lands like your top-quartile winners.

The first 3.6s scores 91; attention and focus both peak above 80.

WHAT'S WEAKER

The product demo at 0:12-0:15 stalls.

Desire plateaus through the beat where winners typically peak.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Replace the static product demo with a use-in-context shot.

Movement and real-context framing tend to fix the desire gap.

Multi-brand workspaces

One workspace. Every brand. Each with its own brain.

Agencies and in-house teams keep a separate signature per brand. Switch contexts in two clicks; quotas roll up at the workspace level.

H
Halcyon
/halcyon
ready
refs 32
final 76
M
Marquee
/marquee
ready
refs 23
final 61
L
Lumen
/lumen
building
refs 16
final
P
Praxis
/praxis
draft
refs 9
final
Bank diagnostics

Find the references in your library that are lying to you.

Every signature build returns a per-reference report: which ads scored consistent with their label, which ones didn't, and which are too ambiguous to trust. Re-label, downweight, or drop — your scoring sharpens accordingly.

bank diagnostics3 to review
cluster 1
cluster 2
cluster 3
cluster 4
cluster 5
homepage_30s_winner.mp4winnerclean78
founder_long_q4.mp4winnerclean72
founder_v1.mp4loserreview51
UGC_reaction_A.mp4loserambiguous48
Six brain-network metrics

What we measure, in plain English.

Cortex tracks six independent dimensions of the predicted brain response. Each one tells you something different about how your ad lands.

Attentionattention

How much your ad pulls focus in the moment — the visual-cortex pull that determines whether a thumb stops scrolling.

Focusfocus

Sustained looking. Distinct from attention: attention catches the eye, focus holds it on a specific element.

Desiredesire

Reward-system activation. The 'I want that' signal that turns interest into intent.

Decisiondecision

Executive-control firing. Where the viewer's prefrontal cortex commits to (or rejects) the proposition.

Self-Relevanceself_relevance

Self-referential activation. Does the viewer see themselves in the ad — does this product feel like it's for them?

Body / Motionbody_motion

Body / motion network. Tracks bodily and somatomotor engagement — the dancing-along effect.

“We were spending $40k a week to find out which creatives worked. Cortex tells us before the creative ever leaves the edit bay.”
Maya Reyes
VP Growth · Halcyon

Stop guessing which ads will work.

Score your first ad in under 5 minutes.