NBCUniversal, which launched an effort to find new ways to measure how many people are watching commercials, is now looking to see what kind of emotional response the ads get and how much ad quality matters.
Kelly Abcarian, executive VP, measurement & Impact, who is leading NBCU’s efforts, said that understanding the quality of advertising creative was important if advertisers want to transact based on the impact of a media campaign.
“While brands spend a ton of time testing before an ad airs, right now, publishers are held accountable for driving results once it does, often only defined as maximizing reach,” Abcarian said in a blog post Tuesday. "But now thanks to new measurement solutions, we believe ad campaign impact can be a shared responsibility.”
Also: NBCU Recognizes More Measurement Companies as Nielsen Alternatives
Abcarian said NBCU is working with Dumbstruck, a company that combines insights from psychology with facial coding and eye tracking to create emotional analytics.
“Already, their creative tools and testing have effectively elevated messaging for brands. Now, we’re testing and learning with Dumbstruck to further prove the relationship between the audience’s emotional response to a specific ad and its in-market performance—and, by extension, open new pathways to not just understanding creative’s true impact but transacting on it,” Abcarian said.
Other companies mentioned by Abcarian were System 1, Emoto.AI, Kantar’s Link Ad Test and Dynata’s Ameritest.
“In this era of new currencies, we need multiple trusted yardsticks that can measure ad campaign impact in its entirety—from emotion to content to conversion, and everything in between," Abcarian said. “And by working together, and exploring new ideas, we can develop a new system of creative testing and measurement solutions that scale impact measurement and make it accessible to all our partners.” ■
