In this interview from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI and Retail Trailblazers series, Marina Petrova, chief executive officer and co-founder of Intentful, joins theCUBE's John Furrier to discuss the architectural shift transforming advertising from one-way messaging into real-time, interactive brand conversations. Petrova explains how more than a century of static, one-directional marketing is giving way to AI-powered ads that respond to customers in the moment of intent — shortening the path to purchase and unlocking qualitative insights that traditional analytics could never capture.
Key themes include how Intentful's patented infrastructure creates a single AI model for each brand that maintains strict tone, voice and governance guardrails across every channel — from display ads to QR-activated billboard experiences on consumer devices. Petrova details how early customers in travel and tourism, including Visit Florida Keys and Visit Lodi, are already discovering sharp disconnects between what marketers assumed about their audiences and what real-time intent data reveals. She highlights a fundamental shift in personalization: rather than producing thousands of creative variations, brands need only one AI capable of tailoring every interaction to individual context. Recently named best ad tech startup at the Silicon Valley M&A Tech Connect by a VC nomination committee, Intentful is entering fundraising to capitalize on what Petrova describes as a land-grab opportunity. From replacing post-mortem data aggregation with live conversational engagement to building a compounding intent-data flywheel, Petrova provides a clear picture of how brands can reclaim control of their distributed identity in the AI era.
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Marina Petrova, Intentful
During NRF's Media Week, John Furrier interviews Remington Tonar, co-founder of Cart.com. Cart.com provides unified commerce solutions, focusing on efficiency and optimization by connecting supply chain with commerce demand gen capabilities. The company has experienced growth through acquisitions and now serves middle market and enterprise brands. They differentiate themselves by bringing together functions that typically don't collaborate. Cart.com emphasizes the importance of AI and domain expertise for success in entrepreneurship, particularly in digitalizing traditional businesses. The company has a track record of taking over operations and implementing their technology for greater efficiency. While facing objections about in-house solutions, Cart.com provides evidence through client references. Ultimately, having a strong backbone and infrastructure is crucial for delivering value in the market.
play_circle_outlineFrom Static to Conversational: AI-Powered Interactive Ads Responding in Real Time to Moments of Intent
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play_circle_outlineThe Intent-Data Flywheel: How Qualitative Interaction Signals Complement Analytics to Drive Personalization and Smarter Transactions
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play_circle_outlinePatented Intentful AI Turns Brands into Interactive, Governed Entities — One Model, One QR, Personalized Travel Experiences Across Channels
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play_circle_outlineDifferentiation from general LLMs: controlled brand engagement versus open AI distribution
In this interview from theCUBE + NYSE Wired: AI and Retail Trailblazers series, Marina Petrova, chief executive officer and co-founder of Intentful, joins theCUBE's John Furrier to discuss the architectural shift transforming advertising from one-way messaging into real-time, interactive brand conversations. Petrova explains how more than a century of static, one-directional marketing is giving way to AI-powered ads that respond to customers in the moment of intent — shortening the path to purchase and unlocking qualitative insights that traditional analytics...Read more
exploreKeep Exploring
How is AI changing advertising by enabling interactive ads, and what is Intentful building to take advantage of that opportunity?add
Why is Intentful focused on intent data and interactive ads, and how does that improve understanding of customers compared with traditional quantitative analytics and focus groups?add
What products or services do you currently have in market, and what traction or momentum can you share?add
How is AI changing the way brands control their messaging and how advertising and engagement operate?add
>> Welcome back everyone to theCUBE here at our Cube's New York Stock Exchange Studio. I'm John Furrier, your host of theCUBE. Of course, we are at Palo Alto studio connecting Silicon Valley and Wall Street. Technology is the market and there is an architectural shift happening. This is our NRF trailblazer. Retail is transforming. Marina Petrova here, CEO and co-founder Intentful, innovative company, startup. Really making an impact on thinking differently. Great to see you again. Thanks for coming back into theCUBE.
Marina Petrova
>> Thank you.
John Furrier
>> You're a Cube alumni now. Second time off. Appreciate it.
Marina Petrova
>> Thank you. Thanks for inviting me.
John Furrier
>> The retail NRF show, the trailblazers, the leaders in retail have all come in and saying the same thing, that the people who get on board with AI at the beginning, leaning in, just getting going or getting benefits from the agentic, getting benefits from all the intelligence that's coming into what is essentially a distributed computing. Your thesis is that there's an architectural shift happening in the ad industry.
Marina Petrova
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> Now, ads are very contextual. They're very behavioral. They're like a perfect fit for the AI disruption. What is your vision on this architectural shift?
Marina Petrova
>> So there are so many things happening obviously with AI and everyone talks about AI. AI is everywhere. No, actually let me go back a step. For the last hundred plus years, all marketing communications advertising has been one way, speaking at customer. We cannot interact with ads. So from TV screens, from billboards, it's all one way. AI now makes it possible to change that. And so what's happening is I think we used to have static advertising, then we had digital and now it's becoming interactive. So the brands, the advertisers, until now, they have been basically leaving revenue on the table because there is no mechanism. If someone sees an ad and they're interested in a product, there is no way for a brand to connect with that customer in the moment of intent. So instead they have to go back and repeat the same message over and over and over until someone actually buys. What's possible with AI right now, and this is what we are building at Intentful, is we're building an infrastructure to make brands interactive, which means ads can speak with customers. So if I have a question, if I see an ad, if I have a question, and then the ad can respond back in real time, right within the ad space on behalf of the brand. The value that it brings to the brand is being present in the moment of intent and therefore shortening that path to process.
John Furrier
>> It's an active model, if I understand you correctly. Now, I remember, I'm old enough to remember all the MarTech stacks, Web 2.0 generation, email marketing, website, data. There was all this kind of analytics around, go figure out what the intent is, the customer journey. It was almost a postmortem data aggregation play.
Marina Petrova
>> Right.
John Furrier
>> Which is great. You can get data. Oh, well, people changed our page. So it was designed to be prescriptive to maybe laying out a webpage or formatting an email, doing an AB test. Now you're starting to see things like on TV when I watch Amazon, interact with the ad. So this idea of active real time engagement is hot. AI is clearly showing that.
Marina Petrova
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> There's no debate. I don't think there is a debate, but if there's a debate, you look at OpenAI and just do things. So, okay, if that's happening, what do you see? What are you guys doing to saying, how do you know the intent? What's the mechanism? What's the solution that you guys envision? Or do you agree with that?
Marina Petrova
>> Oh yeah, I do agree. Absolutely, 100%. And what's the intent with the company Intentful for a reason? So until now, absolutely analytics, everything, a lot has been possible. But all of that was for the most part quantitative. You never know who the actual person is. And it still can be anonymized, but beyond demographics and some behavioral signals, we don't really know who the person is, who the customer is. And I'm not even going to talk about the focus groups and service because just don't even get me started there because they are not really representative. So what's happening now with interactive ads is you can, because a brand can interact with a user, with a customer in the moment of intent, a brand in, again, anonymized, but can see the actual qualitative component and think what happens when it is at scale and think when that intent data compounds and you can start using it more and more. So it takes all of the engagement and understanding of the customer to a completely different level.
John Furrier
>> And what is your approach on the product and solution? You're thinking, what's out there? What do you have out there now? Share some momentum.
Marina Petrova
>> Oh, I'm so proud to talk about this. So what we do is we're a technology company. So we operate at the intersection of brand communication and AI and we enable brands to become interactive, intelligent entities. So we build the infrastructure that makes brands interactive.
John Furrier
>> So you want brands as customers?
Marina Petrova
>> Yes. Yes. But also agency is also everyone in the ecosystem because there is additional value, not just for the advertiser, but for really for all players in the ecosystem. So what we do is there is a brand and right now, let's say it's in control of its marketing communication. Once it becomes interactive, that interactive brand can live within ads commerce content everywhere. There is a touch point. We make it possible for that interaction to happen so that all of the responses are on brand governed according to what that enterprise B2C brand wants to. We have a global patent pattern for this actually and we started, it's live in market, commercially active. We started deliberately with our first segment was travel and tourism because it's so obvious that people have been asking questions. And speaking of intent, we are seeing some amazing things. So what people, what the marketers assumed about their customers, whereas what they're seeing in the ads, what kind of questions people ask, it's like two different worlds.
John Furrier
>> So how do you get the distribution? Because you've got the brands on one side, that's a great customer profile. They have the need, but with all these omnichannel mechanisms, could be a TV, a phone, a backend, does that play into your side or is that more of the brand's, say a brand sponsors a TV program or a documentary on Netflix or Amazon or an electronic billboard or anything?
Marina Petrova
>> Right. That's the whole idea so that we can plug in into existing ecosystem. So the brand continues using the channels that they already have, be it TV or display or anything, and then that interactivity element is added into it. So we're integrating into existing format. It's been quite an interesting experience, to be honest. And fortunately it works everywhere. We always, of course say it's a new product, go ahead and test it. We have some very cool customers like Visit Florida Keys, Visit Lodi.
John Furrier
>> And how are they using it? What are they used in?
Marina Petrova
>> So most of them started with display ads just because this is something that you can relatively quickly launch. And so for example, Visit Florida Keys, it's a beautiful imagery, of course, it's a beautiful destination. And so the way the ad is designed is that engages people not just to click and go to the website.
John Furrier
>> The online ads?
Marina Petrova
>> Yeah, but just start the conversation right within the ad space and get the responses right there.
John Furrier
>> So you're building that kind of like direct response, closed loop, data at the same point.
Marina Petrova
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> What platforms are popular now for your expansion? So you're growing now, you have what? Online's obviously digital.
Marina Petrova
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> Are there other form factors? I just made up electric billboards and TV, but I'm seeing things on Amazon.
Marina Petrova
>> Right.
John Furrier
>> They control that.
Marina Petrova
>> Right.
John Furrier
>> I'm sure they're selling it.
Marina Petrova
>> So the way we have always been thinking that it should go way beyond just the standard ad size because what's possible now, it no longer needs to stay in a box. It can now extend to a consumer device. So if you see an ad on a billboard or in a print magazine anywhere, there is a way to interact with that, even through a simple QR.
John Furrier
>> It could be a QR. Yeah, QR codes. Yeah.
Marina Petrova
>> And then the conversation, the ad continues on the user device and it no longer needs to be limited to 30 seconds. It can continue indefinitely. And for a brand, it's like, oh my God, this is the customer interacting with my brand.
John Furrier
>> So you're providing a technology platform for the brand. So let's just say theCUBE's a customer, just making this up, I'd love to be a customer. I could provide a QR code and then intelligently have the system understand who that is or do I have to create multiple QR codes? So I put a QR code on the screen like here is not one, but I could one in the future. I could have a direct response vehicle with the QR code.
Marina Petrova
>> You just need one. You just need one. So what we would do is we would, and we would love to have you as a customer. So we would create an AI model that is specific to you. So that would be theCUBE AI that knows everything that you would like it to know, speaks in your tone, voice and the standard thing. And then-
John Furrier
>> Actually qubeai.com is a site people can go to. We actually have our AI there, but go ahead, continue.
Marina Petrova
>> Okay.
John Furrier
>> Plug.
Marina Petrova
>> And so then that is being integrated into multiple channels where your team decides that you want to be represented. And then if I interact with your ad or someone from these guys interacts with your ads or someone from the streets, it's still the same QR code, but we will all be getting responses according to our intent and according to the information that we want to get. So it's-
John Furrier
>> That's a big add value because most people have to create custom QR codes to match some swim lane or some mechanism.
Marina Petrova
>> And that's exactly one of the other tectonic shifts I would say that is happening. So one is moving from static digital to interactive. The other one is making the brand interactive. And the third one, the marketing community has been trying to figure out personalization for decades now. And now this is a completely different game. You don't need 1,000 creative variations, you just need one AI.
John Furrier
>> All right. So the personalization is the killer app. The accesses now with AI could be voice activated, QR codes, all that's happening. What's the secret sauce for your technology that makes it different?
Marina Petrova
>> It's a great question. So it's making that brand interactive and that's making AI respond on behalf of the brand within the guardrails and guidelines of the brand. Enterprise B2C brands, as you can imagine, are very strict about every single word, every single pixel, every single everything. And so our technology brings all of that together so that the brand can be comfortable and the brand equity is therefore preserved.
John Furrier
>> What's interesting is that with AI, even just on the non-automated piece that you're doing, there's a lot more variations of the interaction. So I recently bought a pair of skis prior to this winter, pair of Völkls, one of my favorite pairs. I have other skis I like too. But I'm like, okay, I was an expert skier, now I'm older. I interacted with the AI that coached me through, I might like this one because I'm carving more, less bumps. As an example, just the skiing analogy, but I could see that playing out as a contextual linchpin to a brand having much more interactive piece because my intent was to buy a pair of skis. What they didn't know was what I was thinking.
Marina Petrova
>> So there are so many angles on how this can be turned as it evolves, as the technology evolves with brands and AI. There are kind of two sides now. One is when AI speaks for the brand without brand being in control. Right now in that one way communication brand is always in control. Now AI defines the brand and the brands are still not really... They are not there yet. They don't really fully understand. And what's happening is-
John Furrier
>> On the ad side, they have their old school mechanisms.
Marina Petrova
>> Right. And what's happening now, I was just doing the session this morning for a CPG coffee company, and I was explaining to them how their brand is becoming distributed. So it's no longer that they're in control, but it is distributed across multiple, multiple points. So that's one thing that the technology that is not our technology, that's OpenAI technology, Anthropic, Google, whoever. So they are speaking for the brand. And then there is another side which is engagement on behalf of the brand, which is our technology where they control it.
John Furrier
>> Well, you guys just got awarded. I saw in the news, best ad tech startup at a Silicon Valley M&A Tech Connect last week.
Marina Petrova
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> Tell me why you guys won that award. What was the fanfare?
Marina Petrova
>> So that's an event that is-
John Furrier
>> M&A award.
Marina Petrova
>> M&A.
John Furrier
>> Looking a little M&A action?
Marina Petrova
>> Yes. So that is, as far as I know, the nomination is by VC committee. And so that means a lot when you talk not only just obviously consumer is always important. The market is always important, but also when you have VC believe in that probably there is a potential in what you are doing, that feels good, I have to say.
John Furrier
>> Well, Marina, I got to say, you guys, I know you're fundraised, that's words that kind of out in the streets, not public information, but usually M&As happen when people are fundraising.
Marina Petrova
>> Yes.
John Furrier
>> So I'm glad things are going great for you. Great to see you.
Marina Petrova
>> Thank you.
John Furrier
>> Final question, what are you focused on now? What's your plan?
Marina Petrova
>> So we are going into fundraising right now, as you mentioned, and we are growing really, really quickly because there is this opportunity now when the market starts understanding what AI can do. The adoption is sort of catching up, and we're in a unique situation when and I'll maybe sound arrogant, but no one else is doing this. So we are in the land grab mode.
John Furrier
>> Land grab mode. I love that. And brands actually want to have direct relationships with consumers, B2C B B2B2C. The direct response interactive is blurring.
Marina Petrova
>> Yep.
John Furrier
>> The engagement in the organic brands are distributed, but intelligence can generate value out of that. That's where you're going.
Marina Petrova
>> Yes, that's exactly where we're going. And that compound and intent data flywheel is something that I have dreams about at night.
John Furrier
>> Well, thank you for coming on our Retail Leaders series.
Marina Petrova
>> Thank you.
John Furrier
>> Recently in NRF, we celebrate a lot of innovators. Thanks for coming on.
Marina Petrova
>> Thank you. Thanks for your time.
John Furrier
>> We're talking about all the leaders. On the retail trailblazer series, AI is bringing intelligence. That's going to be smarter transactions, more efficiency, but ultimately a better personal experience. As AI comes in as a force multiplier, a lot more value is going to be created. A lot of startups coming out of the woodwork, growth opportunities. We're doing our part here on theCUBE to bring you the action. I'm John Furrier. Thanks for watching. Thank you.
John Furrier