Have you ever been in love? Can you recall the moment when you first looked at him or her? Do you remember the feeling it gave you in your guts? Your heart racing? Your face blushing? You sweating? Believe it or not the same things happen when we see something appealing or less appealing in a commercial, but on a very small scale. So small, that consumers can’t even recall or define it reliably. That’s why you need special sensors to record those unconscious reactions.
What are the ways of measuring emotions? In this article you will be introduced to the following:
Heart-rate measurement
EEG
Skin conductance meter
Facial coding
Eye tracking
1. Heart-rate measurement
Let’s start with the heart, which, you may think, is the source of information about the excitement of our neuro test subjects. In practice, the answer is no. Though the heart-rate itself gives important feedback about the excitement of an individual, it is a source of a much more important reaction in neuromarketing: the level of engagement and understanding. How? Just imagine yourself doing something you really like and that you can keep doing without noticing the passing of the time. This is called “flow experience” in psychology. You must have experienced when time is flying by and you are in a steady state of calm concentration. During the flow your heart rate becomes very steady, the time between your heart beats becomes unique and doesn't variate. Once again, at a minor rate, this is what happens when you watch something you are interested in, and this regularity in heartbeat is what we measure to indicate the level of engagement during short videos or ads. For that purpose we clip a little sensor on our respondents’ ear (to measure the blood pumping in their capillaries with light), called heart-rate sensor, which measures various parameters of heart-rate and from that information, we can calculate how engaging the video was.
Want to learn more about engagement? Click here.
2. EEG (Electroencephalograph)
Brain is one of the greatest mysteries when it comes to understanding emotions. Science still debates about the neurobiological mechanism of emotions, and some emotions are still hard to be linked to a certain area of the brain. Still, we know that the pattern of “communication” between the left and right side of the brain can give us essential indication about what we like and what we reject. In a nutshell, the direction of synaptic transmission is just the opposite in case of rejection and like. This is the basic trait of approach motivation (meaning: whether we approach/like or reject/don’t like something), of which minor alterations we can also measure while watching contents (even if they are not too emotional). Result will reveal what viewers “felt close” to themselves, and what they didn't. Our tool in measurement is a 14-channel EEG headset placed on the respondents’ heads, that captures their brains’ electrical activity.
Want to learn more about approach? Click here.
3. Skin conductance meter
Now let’s get back to the initial picture of you seeing the one you really like, and talk about excitement. Sweating is a part of being excited, as we can all recall from a wonderful kiss or a stressful exam. When we sweat, it changes the conductance of our skin, which leads to the entity of electricity spreading more rapidly from point A to B. If we put a skin conductance meter on our test subjects' wrists, and give them a small electrical impulse, we can measure this as well and get a picture of their arousal level. The curve we get in the end is called excitement.
Want to learn more about excitement? Click here.
4. Facial coding
The last, wide-spread methodology is facial coding. In our face there are 43 delicate muscles working together to show signs and to express emotions. Different muscles are contracted during smiling or frowning, but the mechanism is the same for most individuals. This gives the opportunity to model these expressions and identify thousands of points in the image of our faces. This way, after endless images and webcam recordings, the facial expressions of a new individual can be detected, just as his or her emotions. Although facial coding is a very promising area of innovation, and in the future it can give delicate feedback about the minor changes in the emotions, the current solutions are not sensitive enough to give reliable feedback second-by-second, and can mostly detect well-expressed mimics. Time and technical development will still make this solution an essential part of neuromarketing measurements, especially because you don’t need a lab for facial coding recording, a webcam is enough.
5. Eye-tracking
Last, but not least, let’s talk about a type of measurement which is not exactly a neuromarketing tool. “Eye is the mirror of the soul” they say, which is true in practice as well. Learning about the “visual hotspots” of a leaflet or any other static visual viewers fixate on is one of the key components of learning how well it captures attention. With a harmless infra light we can monitor viewers’ pupils and just gather this information while showing them something. Later we can generate heatmaps (showing areas of interest, parts that capture the eye) from the summary of the data, which is a perfect way to validate the success of communicating with a packshot for example. Why is it not a neuromarketing tool then? The answer is simple: it gives information strictly about the visual attractiveness, but no information about the emotions during the gaze. Still, together with all four measurement types mentioned above it can give a holistic and impactful insight.
So these are the neuromarketing tools we can utilize to measure the emotional impact of your ad. And we all know that the main aim of an ad is to make an emotional imprint to be recalled at a decision making point. If you want to know more, contact us here.
