What sets apart some of the best commercials ever created? They have a catchy storyline that elicits emotional reactions and grabs attention. By using FaceReader Online, one can measure these two responses simultaneously. In this project, we analyze a cat food commercial to show how attention and emotion play a crucial role. This blog shows you how you can use FaceReader Online metrics for effective ad analysis.
Flexible study design
This commercial of Chewy, shows the cat Chewy as protagonist, receiving a very special inheritance to the disdain of the other family. In general, for brand recognition visualizing the brand name effectively is always important. In this study, we focused on understanding how the ad’s Chewy box captured and held the viewer’s attention.
The project included some questions and the Chewy video (and two other static ads). To start the project, participants received a link and participated from their own home via a webcam. First, participants performed a short calibration session necessary for the eye tracking analysis. For more information on the eye tracking technology see this blog. With the use of Prolific, a nice panel website, within a day the results were ready.
Track emotion and attention
The video below shows the positive emotional response combined with the video with the gaze tracking heatmap. As visible, the first scene where people are smiling coincides perfectly with the brand name appearing. In addition, there is a positive rise at the end when again the brandname is visible. Thus the key moments capture attention in a positive way. This shows how combining emotion and eye tracking analysis can be beneficial.
In order to quantify the engagement, it is also possible to extract key metrics for an area. Some example metrics are the time to first fixation, the number of participants who fixated on the box, and the average duration of each fixation. The average duration of total fixations on the Chewy box was about 1.7 seconds, pointing to a high level of engagement. This duration indicates viewers having enough time to consciously process the brand.
Further detailed analysis
Gaze tracking also works well for analysis of static ad content and A/B testing. You can use FaceReader Online to validate design choices and optimize visual hierarchy. Are you interested in more details regarding this study? Do you want to know more about emotion and eye tracking metrics in ad testing? Contact us for the full white paper.
