BrandMo Tech has launched an advertising technology platform focused on cultural audience insights, naming Toronto as its global headquarters and planning to expand its local team over the next 12 to 24 months.
The company said that its platform uses artificial intelligence and weekly audience intelligence to help advertisers reach culturally diverse consumers across desktop, mobile, apps, connected TV and social media. The launch follows five years of work on the model, including campaigns for Canadian affiliates of global advertising agency holding companies.
BrandMo Tech founder and CEO Pawan Jailkhani said advertisers face challenges understanding audiences as the use of cookies declines and major digital platforms retain more control over their advertising ecosystems. The company aims to address those challenges by incorporating cultural context and identity into its advertising technology.
“As cultural diversity accelerates, cookies disappear, and walled gardens deliver diminishing returns, advertisers are losing more than signals — they’re losing audience understanding,” said Jailkhani. “BrandMo Tech was built to solve this problem.”
The company’s platform combines proprietary technology with partnerships involving supply-side platforms, demand-side platforms and premium publishers. It is designed to reduce reliance on cookies and fragmented third-party data while allowing advertisers to run campaigns across multiple digital channels.
Jailkhani said the company chose Canada as its launch market because of its culturally diverse population and what he described as gaps in the advertising industry’s ability to reach those audiences.
“To reach today’s audiences, advertisers must go beyond language. They require context and nuance that honour culture,” added Jailkhani, a two-decade media and adtech veteran who saw Canada as the ideal launching ground: culturally diverse audiences the industry could not reach. “We built culture into every layer of our tech stack so advertisers can reclaim the open internet.”
Platform focuses on audience data and campaign management
BrandMo Tech says its system provides weekly audience intelligence rather than quarterly snapshots, with culturally modelled signals incorporated into programmatic advertising workflows. It also offers campaign management tools intended to coordinate advertising frequency and customer journeys across connected TV, mobile, apps and desktop.
The platform is designed to integrate with advertising technology providers and premium publishers, allowing campaigns to run across the open internet rather than being limited to major digital platforms, the company said. Its technology supports 44 languages and can be accessed through demand-side platforms.
The company is positioning the platform around the ability to account for cultural differences in advertising, rather than relying on language alone to identify and engage potential customers.
BrandMo Tech cited research indicating that nearly 70 per cent of Canadian newcomers feel a stronger sense of belonging to brands that advertise in their language. It also pointed to Statistics Canada figures showing that culturally diverse communities represented 26.5 per cent of Canada’s population, with that share projected to reach between 38.2 and 43 per cent by 2041.
The company did not disclose financial details of the launch or specify how many employees it plans to add in Toronto. Its stated expansion timeline is 12 to 24 months.
Toronto to serve as global headquarters
BrandMo Tech said it intends to invest in Canadian partnerships as it grows its operations. The planned Toronto hiring expansion will take place over the next one to two years, although the company did not provide a target for the size of its workforce.
The company describes itself as a global advertising technology and intelligence business and says it is a member of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Its launch marks the start of what BrandMo Tech calls its growth phase after five years of developing and testing its approach through advertising campaigns for Canadian affiliates of global agency holding companies. The company says its platform is intended to give advertisers more current audience information and help them manage campaigns across multiple channels while accounting for cultural context.
In an interview with Retail Insider, Jailkhan spoke about the initiative.
What gap in the Canadian advertising and adtech market led to Culture First?
The face of Canada has changed. Adtech hasn’t caught up. Most platforms still treat culture like a language setting. Advertisers translate the flyer, buy an in-language placement and call it cultural marketing. They miss the shoppers they’re trying to reach, and they’re doing it with data that’s often months old.
Every week that continues, advertisers and retailers are paying for impressions that don’t land.
- They can’t afford that right now. 51 per cent of Canadian shoppers are cutting discretionary spending and 35 per cent are trading down (Salesforce).
- New permanent residents fell 20.2 per cent year over year in the first quarter (Statistics Canada), so growth now means winning the diverse shoppers already here.
- Culture First was developed to address this gap by bringing behavioural, contextual and cultural intelligence into mainstream media planning.
- By refreshing audience intelligence weekly, we help brands and agencies better understand evolving consumer interests, purchasing intent and media consumption patterns, rather than relying solely on static demographic or language-based segments. .
How does culturally modelled audience intelligence differ from demographic, language and third-party targeting, and how is it developed and updated weekly?
Demographic, language and third-party segments sort people into broad buckets: age, income, postal code, “speaks Punjabi.”
They can’t tell you how someone shops or who influences the purchase. Two 35-year-olds on the same street look identical in a DSP (demand-side platform, the software advertisers use to buy digital ads). One researches every spec before she buys. The other is family-first, wants value and trusts her community’s recommendations. Demographics can’t tell them apart. We can, by combining cultural, behavioural, contextual and intent signals across 44 languages.
Through TrueInsight, our proprietary audience intelligence platform, BrandMo combines behavioural, contextual, cultural and intent signals to develop audience segments that reflect changing consumer interests. These signals are refreshed weekly, helping advertisers adapt their planning and activation strategies as audience behaviour evolves.
Timing matters too. Much of the industry updates segments monthly or quarterly.
Diwali, Lunar New Year and Eid move every year, and the shopping starts weeks before the day. Being late costs sales: 37 per cent of Canadian shoppers switch retailers when they can’t find what they came for (Leger for the Retail Council of Canada). Our intelligence refreshes weekly, so retailers see demand building and act on it.
How does the platform address privacy and the decline of cookies while still reaching culturally diverse audiences across CTV, mobile, apps, desktop and social?
Third-party cookies have historically played a significant role in digital advertising, but growing privacy expectations, regulatory changes and browser restrictions are forcing advertisers to rethink how they understand and reach consumers.
BrandMo Tech is designed to reduce advertisers’ dependence on third-party cookies by combining privacy-governed audience intelligence with behavioural, contextual, cultural and intent signals.
Rather than relying solely on demographic profiles, postal codes or language preferences, our Culture First™ approach helps advertisers better understand evolving consumer interests, shopping behaviours and purchase intent.
Through TrueInsight, our proprietary audience intelligence platform, these signals are refreshed weekly, helping retailers work with more current audience intelligence rather than relying on static segments that may no longer reflect consumer behaviour.
Through our technology and partnerships with leading SSPs, DSPs and premium publishers, advertisers can use this intelligence to inform activation across supported programmatic environments, including CTV, mobile, apps and desktop, while continuing to work with their existing buying platforms.
For retailers, this means they can better understand and engage culturally diverse and general-market audiences through a unified approach, without having to build separate media strategies or replace their existing technology infrastructure.
We don’t replace the media stack. We make it smarter.
Five years powering campaigns: what have you learned about how advertisers reach, or miss, culturally diverse Canadian consumers?
One of the biggest lessons from five years of campaign execution is that cultural relevance isn’t limited to cultural occasions. Consumers’ shopping decisions are shaped by changing needs, interests, lifestyles and media habits throughout the year. Advertisers who treat cultural intelligence as a year-round planning input are better positioned to identify relevant audiences and respond to changing demand. Three problems keep coming up in retail that BrandMo Tech solves:
- Problem: very different shoppers get lumped together. A “South Asian” or “Chinese” segment gets one message regardless of generation, life stage or time in Canada. Fix: plan by behaviour and life stage, not a single label.
- Problem: spending spikes around a festival or heritage month, then goes dark. IAB Canada calls for year-round multicultural advertising, treated as “a driver of growth, not a discretionary add-on” (IAB Canada). Fix: stay present all year and use weekly data to time the peaks.
- Problem: retailers miss the moments that build loyalty. A newcomer furnishing a first apartment, a young family buying a home and an established household upgrading all shop differently, even when they share a language. Fix: reach shoppers when they’re choosing where to shop, and adjust weekly.
Why Toronto as global HQ, and what are the plans for the next 12 to 24 months?
Toronto is a natural home for BrandMo because it brings together cultural diversity, a sophisticated advertising industry and a strong technology ecosystem. As our global headquarters, it will anchor our next phase of growth, including expanding our Canadian team, strengthening supply, demand and technology partnerships, and developing additional audience intelligence and planning capabilities. Over the next 12 to 24 months, our focus is on scaling these capabilities across Canada while supporting our broader North American expansion. See job postings here.
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