Using Biometrics in Market Research
Indivar (Indy) Kushari of Ipsos ASI presented “The Lizard Made You Do It! Uncovering Our Response To Ads Using Biometrics” at NetGain 6.0. Here’s a recap:
The lizard brain references our primitive brain, where our emotions live. Everything we do depends on the emotions that a stimulus generates. The difference between emotion and reason, according to neurologist Donald B. Caine: “emotion leads to action, while reason leads to conclusions.”
Ninety five percent of brain processing occurs below conscious awareness, and what we say in terms of how we feel about a stimulus is only 10% of how we actually feel about it. So, we need to better understand what we can’t say. One of the ways that Ipsos ASI is doing this is through neuroscience – a method that helps us understand the full emotional experience.
Four types of neuroscience:
- Facial coding: Scientifically breaks own people’s facial reactions into emotional reactions. These reactions may even be unknown to the respondent. However, the interpretation depends on who is coding the responses.
- fMRI: The full monty of neuroscience, in which your brain reactions are measured from all angles. However, an fMRI machine is not comfortable for respondents, and it’s not very scalable due to cost.
- EEG: Tries to understand the brain using nodes connected to the head. However, because this method largely delivers information about cognitive responses, which it what surveys already collect.
- Biometrics: Focuses on how emotions are experienced through the automatic nervous system of the body: skin, heart rate, breathing and motion. Every emotion is a combination of these four reactions, at a granular level.
Innerscope and Ipsos ASI use biometrics for ad testing research, in which responses for all four of these systems are coded at every second of watching an ad stimulus. The method involves wearing a belt around the solar plexis, as well as finger sensors; a stable sample requires about 30-35 respondents. The ads to be tested are embedded with other contemporary ads and movie trailers, as well as a mood reel – an emotional warm-up that allows researchers to calibrate responses prior to viewing the ad.
Case Study on the iPad 2 launch Ad
In May 2011, Ipsos ASI and Innerscope tested the iPad 2 launch ad as part of a study on tablet advertising. Ipsos did 200 interviews using its ad testing methodology of combined qualitative and quantitative research. The survey indicated that the ad was well-liked and appealed creatively to an audience. It did a great job of setting itself apart from other ads. However, shift in purchase intent as a result of seeing the ad was minimal, as was functional appeal (the feeling that the ad shared new and different information). Ipsos wanted to better understand the low performance on these measures, but consumers had a hard time articulating this in focus groups. Enter biometrics.
The biometrics data showed that consumer engagement in the ad went up when talking about people’s belief systems around technology, declined when discussing the specs of the technology (faster, better, lighter) and then sloped back up when discussing what the technology delivers (delight, magic, a leap forward). The “branding moment” at the end of the ad took place at the highest level of emotional engagement. And this is significant because the highest level of an engagement curve has been correlated to channel changing behavior and set-top box commercial ratings. Furthermore, the size of the largest area of the curve while engagement is going up indicates whether or not the ad generates an emotional journey, which has been correlated with predicting online buzz.
The conclusion: This ad talked about the emotional payoff more than any other ad, and the payoff was evident in the biometrics study. The low functional appeal of the ad helped reinforce a focus on emotional benefits and was actually a differentiator for the brand.
As for what this means for biometrics, this case study demonstrates that biometrics is a strong indicator of the holistic emotional power of the ad. However, it does not deliver brand-related metrics (purchase intent, functional appeal) by itself. Instead, biometrics can provide diagnostics to help understand the numbers.
