January 31, 2025

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Exploring Emotional Reactions from Relevant Target Audiences

In the world of advertising, understanding your target audience can determine the success of a marketing campaign. What resonates with one group may fall flat with another. By using facial coding technology, marketers can gain unique insights into direct emotional reactions, helping them craft messages that truly connect. In this blog, we explore how you can use filters in FaceReader Online and visualize different results for your target groups. We see how men and women react differently to two car commercials and what this means for targeting and message design.

In this project, we analyzed nonverbal responses to two different car commercials using: Kia Nero “Hero’s Journey” (featuring Melissa McCarthy) which is a humorous, dynamic commercial with a celebrity appeal. As a more neutral control video, we used a more traditional ad Alfa Romeo “dear predictable”, showcasing a sleek car in a beautiful natural landscape.

Defining and analyzing your target audience

Who is the most relevant target group differs per product and service. With FaceReader Online, you have the flexibility to create custom groups based on your research needs. While gender and age are fundamental categories automatically estimated by the algorithm, additional independent variables can be incorporated by integrating survey questions. You can create these questions directly within the platform or via an external survey provider.

Once your data is collected, creating participant filters is a straightforward process. These filters serve as group variables, allowing you to segment and analyze relevant emotional responses efficiently. With FaceReader Online, you can generate targeted result outputs for each group and, most importantly, compare them directly. This ability to contrast reactions across demographics provides deeper insights into audience engagement and preference. See the steps to follow below.

Simple steps to compare and understand you taget audience in facereader online
Dashboard screenshot that shows you the steps to follow to compare groups

Women show higher positive emotional reactions

In this project, the comparison of the two videos shows a difference for the Kia commercial, but not for the Alpha Romeo commercial. For the Kia commercial the mean expressions of happiness for women is twice as high compared to men. On average they also respond slightly more surprised, which is understandable: in the first scene a whale jumps on Melissa McCarthney her boat. Apparently men are not so easily shocked by this. These results give insights into the general emotional reaction of your target audience.

Difference in happy and surprised expressions for men and women. Note that the values are low, since the expressions occur for a moment and are an average over the entire video. 

In depth scene analysis with highlights and first/last impressions

To gain more insight into which specific scenes your target audience find funny, you can visualize the highlights for each group. These highlights can then be ordered based on impact or time. Interestingly, the exact same highlights appear to elicit smiling in men and women (each time something terrible happens to McCartney). However, the order is somewhat different. This is especially clear in the graph showing the first and last impression. Both groups have a positive first impression, however, females do not end as positively as males. From the Peak-end rule we know ending on a positive note is better for remembering information (also see this case study). Therefore, to target women better, the commercial could have been shortened, since on average women already maximize their response earlier and it might become repetitive. 

Highlights of video in FaceReader Online
An example of the highlights (for all participants) for the Kia Nero video.
First and last impression graph of males facereader online
First and last impression for males
First and last impression graph of females of facereader online
First and last impression for females

How facial coding technology can help understand your target audience

By using FaceReader Online, advertisers can measure nonverbal responses of a specific target audience objectively and in real-time. This offers critical insights that go beyond self-reported data:

  • Compare Emotional Responses Across Demographics: Identify how different groups respond to the same ad.
  • Refine Ad Elements: Test elements like humor, tone, and visual style to see what resonates most with your target audience.
  • Optimize Campaign Performance: Use emotional data to predict how well your ad will perform and adjust, e.g. cut/add accordingly.

Gain a deeper understanding with a few simple steps. Create a project, send the link to your target audience and visualize the results with numerous graphs. If you want to already experience the analysis first hand, you can try visualizing the results of this project yourself! This project is available as a demo project in each trial account. Request a trial via the button on the upper right corner and start right away. 

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