Dive Brief:
- According to Fortune, last year the BBC conducted an online ad survey that involved using webcams to track viewers’ reactions such as happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, puzzlement and even rejection of online ads.
- The idea behind the study was to get beyond focus groups or questionnaires, because as Andrew Tenzer, senior research manager at BBC Global News, told Fortune, “Our face never lies.”
- One result from the study was viewers did not like to be tricked by sponsored content that looked like editorial content, and their facial expressions registered less "rejection" when the ads were clearly labeled as such.
Dive Insight:
The BBC study made use of facial recognition technology created by CrowdEmotion, an in-house startup.
CrowdEmotion explained the technology in a statement to Fortune, “Using CrowdEmotion’s emotional intelligence platform, broadcasters can find out exactly what an audience thought about a programme instead of being fed skewed data by respondents trying to give the right answer.”
The BBC’s Tenzer acknowledged the process is somewhat inexact, pointing out that “puzzlement” could mean something is intriguing, or possibly that the viewer is just deep in thought.
The idea of using facial recognition for market research is increasing. Nielsen recently purchased neuromarketing company Innerscope Research, which was expected to provide insight using factors like a subject's heart rate and neural activity to ultimately help advertisers improve campaigns. And TVision deployed in the Boston area with its “eyes-on-screen” technology.
The issue, however, is use of this type of technology should be extremely transparent because of the potential for privacy issues and consumer blow-back is extremely high.