“Facial expressions paint a rich canvas of emotional response that provide invaluable insight into advertising and brand effectiveness,” stated the research agency. Moreover, “Traditional methods of measuring emotion are not always capable of capturing a true emotional response,” said Daren Poole, Global brand director of Millward Brown’s ad testing tool ‘Link’. “Facial coding allows us to track how a person really responds, rather than what they claim to have felt.”
The idea is simple: the spontaneous reactions of viewers in front of their computers at home are captured by webcams used to record and measure real time emotional responses during ad viewing. According to Millward Brown, this method allows them to see if the viewer pays attention to the ad, how they respond to it, and even predict ad impact.
“If a campaign is pushing the boundaries in terms or humour or controversy this is a controlled means to test how consumers really respond,” added Poole.
From this point of view, if the selection of viewers is made properly, this could indeed really help companies launch only those ad campaigns that will have a real impact on consumers, and will avoid embarrassing or potential controversial ads.