Running Reports
Product vs Brand Research Mode
The most important setting before you run — it determines the entire scope of the research.
What is research mode?
Research mode tells the Mavrtr engine what to study. It affects both the research stage (what sources the agent hunts) and the customer intelligence stage (whose avatar gets built).
| Setting | Research scope | Avatars describe | Best when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Product | Buyers of the specific SKU + close substitutes. Brand data is used only for voice / price tier context. | People who would buy that product | Running an ad campaign for a specific product. Writing product-page copy. Launching a new SKU. |
| Brand | The brand's full buyer base across all categories. | Different segments of the brand's total audience | Brand positioning. Understanding the company's overall customer mix. Onboarding a new client. |
How the mode affects research prompts
In Product mode, the research agent receives a prompt that includes the exact product title and description labelled as "FOCUS PRODUCT". It is explicitly instructed to stay narrow and treat the brand's other categories as background context only.
In Brand mode, the focus product label is deliberately omitted. The agent receives only the top-product list as context and is told: "Do NOT narrow to a single product or SKU."
Cache isolation
Product-mode and brand-mode runs for the same store are cached separately. A brand-mode re-run will never serve results from a product-mode cache entry.
Which should I choose?
For most media buying use cases, Product mode is the right choice. The avatars will be sharper, the objections more specific, and the ad angles more actionable because everything is anchored to the exact problem the product solves.
Use Brand mode when you need a broader view — for example, to understand why someone shops at the brand at all, or to identify which buyer segment is underserved by the current ad strategy.