Publication date: Wednesday, 17 July 2019
When consumers are exposed to videos, they generally show some level of engagement. For marketing and communication practitioners it would be a great advantage to be able to assess the level of engagement with the advertising video or – even better – shape it. What if we could predict when consumers would strongly engage with such content by analysing the neural activity that takes place during subconscious processes in their brains? Businesses and other organisations could then optimise their video towards higher levels of engagement. Hang-Yee Chan, PhD candidate at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) recently produced results that revealed it is possible to predict levels of consumer engagement with a video by showing it to a small group of viewers and measuring their brain responses.
We know that people are captivated by video content that’s engaging. Recent studies have demonstrated that when people share a common experience, such as talking with each other, their brains appear to react the same way.
Consumer engagement is the key to gaining consumer preference. Hang-Yee Chan explains: “We know that people are captivated by video content that’s engaging. Recent studies have demonstrated that when people share a common experience, such as talking with each other, their brains appear to react the same way. That brought me to develop my research question. I wanted to know if several people see a good commercial, do their brains show similarity in the activity in their temporal lobes and cerebellums, the parts of the brain associated with processing emotions and understanding narratives?”
Hang-Yee tested his hypothesis by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the brains of people watching TV commercials, essentially tracking their brain activities while they go through the videos. fMRI measures brain activity by detecting changes associated with blood flow; blood flow increases in an area of the brain that is active. His study showed correlation between subjects being shown engaging content and the extent to which their brains reacted with similar neural activity. In other words, a fascinating video generated more similar reactions in the brain, whereas a less engaging video would make people’s minds start to wander and ‘tune out’, thus creating disparate brain reactions among viewers.
Hang-Yee used fMRI to measure the brain activity of 60 people as they each watched the same sequence of 35 commercials. He compared the brain activity patterns of each participant. Comparisons revealed that commercials that stimulated highly similar neural activity in certain parts of the brains – specifically, areas that are responsible for understanding emotions and narratives – across participants in the experiment also tended to do well at engaging consumers in the market. The findings of this study were echoed in a follow-up study that measured brain activity in 28 people watching a sequence of 18 movie trailers; it implies that the same effect on brain activity is observed in people watching any kind of engaging video.
Marketing practitioners can use this fMRI technique to measure brain activity in test groups of consumers watching videos to be better able to predict market-level response to these videos in the real world. Videos that are less engaging could be adapted before broadcast in the market. This study also demonstrated at which locations in the brain such episodes of similar activity occur. Hang-Yee Chan explains “Similar activity happens in the parts of the brain responsible for processing stories and emotions, implying that adding appealing emotions and easily understandable content to videos increases people’s engagement with the video. fMRI has incredible potential for enhancing marketing strategies by increasing engagement and action.”
The article “Neural similarity at temporal lobe and cerebellum predicts out-of-sample preference and recall for video stimuli” was published in NeuroImage.
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Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM) is one of Europe’s top-ranked business schools. RSM provides ground-breaking research and education furthering excellence in all aspects of management and is based in the international port city of Rotterdam – a vital nexus of business, logistics and trade. RSM’s primary focus is on developing business leaders with international careers who can become a force for positive change by carrying their innovative mindset into a sustainable future. Our first-class range of bachelor, master, MBA, PhD and executive programmes encourage them to become to become critical, creative, caring and collaborative thinkers and doers.
