NEUROSCIENCE IN ADVERTISING RESEARCH

 Neuroscience in Advertising Research

Neuroscience: A New Perspective:

Martin Lindstrom’s 2008 book Buyology makes a strong claim: that neuroscience will play a revolutionary role in research and marketing in the future. As a result, many marketers are challenging accepted modes of advertising development and research on the grounds that “neuroscience says” that what we’ve done before is wrong. However, we don’t believe that marketers need to turn their backs on tried-and-true research techniques in favor of the apparent objectivity of neuroscience. Rather, marketers should use neuroscience-based research in conjunction with established techniques when (and only when) it adds value. If used in isolation, such methods can be hard to interpret, but when combined with qualitative or survey-based research, they can add a powerful new dimension of insight.

Which Methods to Use

In choosing among neuroscience–based techniques, we have found it useful to ask the following questions:

• Does the approach tell us something meaningful about brands or marketing?

• Does it tell us something we don’t already know, and enough to justify its cost?

• Is it practical and scalable?

From among the many new techniques that have emerged from recent learning on the workings of the brain, we have identified three that meet all three of these tests. These are: implicit association measurement, eye-tracking, and brainwave measurement. When used in conjunction with established methods, these techniques can yield insights that lead to more effective marketing.

 Implicit Association Measurement

While implicit association measurement is not strictly a “neuroscience” technique, what it shares with other truly biometric methods is the principle of inferring consumers’ responses, rather than asking direct questions. The approach relies on the fact that the brain stores information in networks of ideas and responses. An experience of a brand Implicit association techniques help reveal the “raw” ideas stirred up by brands and ads before any filtering for sense or social desirability has taken place.

When to Use Neuroscience

Clearly, these three neuroscience-based research techniques have value to offer. We believe that they tend to add the most value when dealing with needs and situations such as the following:

a. Sensitive material: Qualitative and survey methods are most vulnerable to distortion when sensitive material is involved. Methods that don’t rely on explicit questions can reveal unstated attitudes more effectively.

b. Abstract or “higher order” ideas: Consumers may find it difficult to express some of the abstract ideas at the heart of some brands’ positionings. Implicit association methods are useful to probe for ideas that participants might be too self-conscious to verbalize, or simply unable to articulate.

c. A need to probe for transient responses to ads or brand experiences: Consumers are great at talking about the gist of an ad or brand, but they may not be able to explain how they got there. Eye-tracking and EEG can help researchers fill in the blanks by identifying the focus of attention and illustrating the highs and lows of emotional and cognitive response to a piece of creative.

d. A need to understand consumers’ feelings: When questions are framed correctly, consumers can talk about their feelings in response to surveys and qualitative research. But neuroscience-based methods can add an additional level of detail about the timing of these responses and their origins.

Known as consumer neuroscience, or neuromarketing, this type of investigation probes people’s unconscious responses to advertising in order to help identify winning ads. For instance, the United States Postal Service is working with researchers using imaging machines to see if direct mail lights up certain parts of the brain that e-mails don’t. Spanish language broadcaster Univision has paid dozens of young Hispanics to don EEG caps and measured their brain waves while they watched ads in English, Spanish, or Spanglish to better understand their impact. The idea of neuromarketing started to win wide attention, although there’s conflicting evidence about how well it works.

A 2011 report by the Advertising Research Foundation, paid for by companies including Clorox and General Motors, concluded that the technology was not yet “bona fide advertising science.”

The techniques—which include cameras that spot facial expressions—are meant to replace pen-and-paper surveys or focus groups, in which consumers are asked if they can remember ads and whether they plan to buy the product shown.

That business, known as copy testing, is worth about $750 million a year globally and is part of a larger global market for ad effectiveness research estimated at $2.5 billion, says David Brandt, executive vice president for advertising effectiveness strategy at Nielsen.

Since 2011, Nielsen has operated a division called Nielsen Neuro, which uses EEG measurements of brain waves to study ads at 11 laboratories located around the world. According to Brandt, Nielsen has studied more than 100 commercials and linked the EEG results to actual changes in product sales. The division also carried out the work for Univision, which found that Hispanics reacted better to Spanish-language ads. Brandt says neuromarketing technologies account for about 4 percent of the copy testing market but are growing quickly.

More than a dozen companies, most of them small, offer neuroscience tools to customers today. Perhaps the biggest name in the field is Nielsen. The company has earned patents on new types of EEG caps and is trying to come up with cheaper, more portable ways to measure consumer reactions, hoping that if they become as cheap as paper surveys and can be used on a wider scale—in malls, not just in labs—they will come to have more impact.

The Super Bowl project is an annual event for Innerscope, which emerged out of research at the MIT Media Lab that looked at the physiological responses of poker bluffers and speed daters. The company works with several technologies, but on game day it was using a belt to measure subjects’ heart rate and breathing while electrodes taped to their fingers tracked galvanic skin response, some of the same measures polygraphs use to spot the heightened emotions caused by telling lies. At Innerscope, these readings are combined into what the company calls an “engagement trace”—a line that moves up and down as an ad progresses, reflecting the viewer’s emotional state, says Carl Marci, a psychologist who is chief science officer at the company. The more emotional the viewer, says Marci, the better the chance he or she will remember an ad.

TV companies are looking for technologies that can protect their $78 billion in annual U.S. ad revenue against changing viewer habits and help match the sort of click-by-click tracking advertisers enjoy on the Web, says Dan Aversano, senior vice president for client and consumer insights at Turner Broadcasting, the owner of CNN and an Innerscope research partner. “We can bring that into television,” Aversano says.

At its research lab in New York City, Turner has belted up participants who use a smartphone or tablet while watching TV and found that although they looked at the TV less during ad breaks, they remained engaged with the TV audio track. In a report it began circulating last year, Turner recommends that its advertisers consider snapping viewers’ eyes back using “sirens, alarms, screams” just before a brand name appears.

 

Physiological rating scales

Physiological measures detect how consumers react to messages, based on physical Reponses. Eye-tracking systems have been developed to monitor eye movements across print ads. Another Physiological measures is a pyscho-galvanometer , which galvanic skin responses (GRS) .,GRS is a measure of minute changes in perspiration which suggests arousal related to some stimulus in this case , an advertisement .

Voice response analysis is another high-research procedure. Inflections in the voice when discussing an ad indicated excitement and other physiological states . Other less frequently used physiological measures record brain wave activity , heart rate , blood pressure and muscle contraction.

 

1. Pupil metric testing

Perceptoscope or Pupilometric Devices Record changes in pupil’s dilatation. Dilatation indicates reading and attention. Contraction shows his dislike to what is being read. It evaluates interesting appealing visual stimuli.

It is developed by Eekhard Hess and James Polk. Left eye is photographed o record dilatation.

2. Eye-movement camera

It is used in advertising research; this equipment tracks the movement of the eye over press advertisements, showing the path which the eye takes and indicating the sequence of interest that the features arouse. It measures the eye movement over the layout of test ads. The route taken by the eye is noted. The pauses are noted. The areas of interest and attention can be judged.

 

3. Galvanometric Response:

It means change in skin conductivity due to changes in moisture content (perspiration); measured by current flow as indicated on a galvanometer. This change may have a correlation with psychological stimuli (e.g. fear or other emotion) and arguably may provide a measure of a respondent’s reaction to an advertisement

4. Voice pitch analysis

A type of analysis that examines changes in the relative frequency of the human voice that accompany emotional arousal. Greater the deviation from the person’s normal (baseline) voice, the greater the emotional intensity of the person’s reaction to a stimulus, such as a question. Used in packaged research, to predict brand preference, and to determine predisposition to buy a product. It is also now used to measure consumers’ emotional responses to advertising. However, the validity of Voice Pitch studies is questionable.

5. Brain Wave Research:

Brain pattern analysis or Brain wave analysis equipment are non-invasive and resembles a pair of headphones. It takes brain wave measurement continuously from the surface of the head and converts them into an Engagement Index (EI) five times per second through a proprietary algorithm NASA. It helps in evaluating winners from also-rans, which ads do a better job of engaging the viewers.