Eye Tracking: A New Method for Marketers to Identify How You Really Feel About the Media You See
An effective company takes every opportunity to expose you to their advertising and marketing materials. Billions of dollars are spent every year in efforts to attract consumers’ attention and convince them to engage in a desired behavior or action. With this much money being spent on marketing, it is essential for companies to know how effective their campaigns are.
Conventional methods for evaluating the effectiveness of marketing consist of focus groups, surveys, and interviews in which consumers describe the way they feel after viewing a commercial or looking at an ad, and so on. Today, however, it is possible for market researchers to get information beyond what consumers say and actually find out how consumers subconsciously feel about what they see.
Companies like Innerscope Research are collecting biometric data using eye tracking technology and EKG monitors that measure heart rate, breathing, perspiration, and body movement to gauge subconscious responses. Eye-tracking technology shows exactly where viewers look on the screen. If their gaze wanders from the screen, researchers can pinpoint physical reactions to specific moments throughout the consumer’s viewing session. According to Innerscope’s website, “Emotion comes before thoughts, feelings, or actions,” and they have developed a solution to the limitations of conscious self report by quantifying and tracking emotional engagement with objective measurements.
Using this technology to evaluate the effectiveness of multiple forms of media, like TV, Internet, print, and radio, companies can get a better idea of how their customers truly feel. Entertainment companies, such as Fox, NBC, and Discovery, have started using biometric studies to find out how viewers physically react to their programming.
Brian Lowry, Chief TV Critic for Variety.com, recently participated in a study at Warner Bros. Media Lab to see exactly how these companies conduct biometric tests. Wearing a test vest and EKG nodes attached to his torso, Lowry was shown programming on a computer screen while researchers monitored his reactions from the next room. These entertainment companies are testing scenarios like how viewers react to product placement in a TV show or determining if a movie preview evokes the desired emotional response from its target audience.
Biometric technologies give marketing researchers a whole new approach to maximizing the value of their advertising dollars. They can enhance the experience of the consumer through the use of marketing materials that evoke the desired unconscious emotional responses.
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