Unruly Teams Up With Nielsen, Affectiva, Moodagent And Kent State University To Bring End-To-End Emotional Intelligence To Digital Advertising
- New proprietary tool uses biometric, neurological, emotional and audio testing to allow advertisers to maximise emotional and business impact of ads; validates if ads are authentic and consistent with brand values
- Unruly also launches Emotional Private Marketplaces, allowing marketers to programmatically target premium publishers most likely to amplify emotional responses to their ads
September 8, 2016 – Video ad tech company Unruly today launches two new products designed to bring end-to-end emotional intelligence to digital advertising.
To help advertisers create an emotional connection with consumers, Unruly has developed Unruly EQ™ – an innovative new content testing tool, launched in partnership with marketing research firm Nielsen, emotional analytics company Affectiva and pioneers in music data analysis Moodagent, that gives advertisers the data they need to maximise the emotional, social and business impact of their video content.
To join the dots between content and distribution, the video ad tech company today also launches a series of new private marketplaces (PMPs), which allow marketers to programmatically target premium media environments that complement the emotional footprint of their ads.
Academic and industry studies have repeatedly proven the effects of emotional advertising on brand and business metrics. According to a recent Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience study, ads with above average EEG scores (emotional ads) deliver a 23% uplift in sales volume, while the Field, IPA and Gunn Report, “Selling Creativity Short”, stated that awarded campaigns (emotional campaigns) were 10X more efficient than non-awarded campaigns.
Unruly EQ uses a combination of biometric, neurological, emotional and audio testing methods to evaluate, improve and predict the emotional impact and brand effectiveness of their video ads.
These include:
- Brand authenticity and perception testing – Unruly EQ allows marketers to test their ads to see if the content is perceived as authentic and consistent with their brand’s values and purpose;
- EEG testing – Collaborating with Nielsen Consumer Neuroscience, Unruly EQ can measure non-conscious responses, something traditional research misses, for a more complete view of consumers. 32 sensors are used to capture activity across all brain regions, along with eye tracking. Unruly Insight analysts and Nielsen neuroscientists use the data to produce recommendations for content optimisation;
- Emotional analytics and facial coding – Advertisers are given a second-by-second emotional trace of their content using Affectiva’s market-leading facial coding and emotion analytics technology;
- Audio testing – Unruly EQ incorporates testing from Moodagent, using machine learning to examine how a specific soundtrack amplifies or detracts from the emotional intensity and overall effectiveness of an ad;
- Social impact and shareability analysis – Unruly’s unique algorithm is trained using almost 1 million consumer responses to videos and sharing data relating to 3 trillion video views, and enables advertisers to predict and improve the social impact of their video content.
The deep analysis provided by EQ will allow advertisers to optimise their video campaigns by providing:
- Identification of the type and intensity of emotions elicited by an ad to predict its overall impact;
- Diagnostics to optimise content for emotional impact and improve creative quality;
- Deep analysis of the metrics that matter, including authenticity, brand statements, brand impact, purchase intent and predicted shareability.
Unruly co-CEO Sarah Wood said: “Unruly EQ is the supercollider of digital video testing that smashes together data and emotions, sparking new insights that will help advertisers move the needle on brand and campaign performance. Forward-thinking marketers already appreciate the importance of emotional intelligence when it comes to video advertising. Authenticity, in particular, is very important to viewers, with 76% of consumers saying they lose trust when an ad feels inauthentic (source: Unruly Future Video Survey).”
Unruly today also launches Emotional PMPs, a series of curated private marketplaces – created in collaboration with Ohio’s Kent State University and available exclusively from SSP UnrulyX – that helps marketers match their ads with the mood of their audiences.
Unruly has found that campaigns targeting people most likely to engage emotionally with specific video creatives result in a 74% increase in brand favorability and an 80% increase in purchase intent. By targeting consumers within environments where they are most likely to emotionally connect with a specific ad, brands will be able to further boost the ROI of their ad campaigns. Private marketplaces currently available include Hilarity, Surprise and Pride.
Sarah added: “By launching Unruly EQ for testing content and Emotional PMPs for distribution, Unruly brings end-to-end emotional intelligence to digital advertising. Programmatic advertising needs to evolve if brands want to make a meaningful connection with consumers – that’s why emotional intelligence is just as important for distribution as it is for content creation. With Emotional PMPs, advertisers can get in sync in with the mood of their viewers and massively increase viewer engagement.”
UNRULY, UNRULYX, UNRULY EQ and logos and associated marks are trademarks of Unruly Group. Other marks are owned by their respective owners.
Availability
Unruly EQ is available from today across 16 markets including United Kingdom, United States, Germany, France, Singapore, Australia and Japan. Emotional PMPs will initially be available in United Kindom, United States, Germany and Sweden.
Supporting quotes
Rana el Kaliouby, co-founder and CEO of Affectiva, said: “Emotions matter, they influence consumer behavior and can be predictive of sales lift, purchase intent, virality and other key advertising metrics. We are delighted to partner with Unruly. Our emotion recognition technology allows Unruly EQ clients to measure the unfiltered emotional responses of consumers, unobtrusively and at scale using just a webcam.”
Peter Berg Steffensen, CEO of Moodagent, added: “Accurate emotional analysis is the key to successful targeting. Moodagent’s unique capabilities for creating a complete emotional profile of any given soundtrack will be a strong addition to Unruly EQ. We’re excited to team up with Unruly, Affectiva and Nielsen to provide better insights for optimised emotional impact. With our combined efforts, we’ll be aiming for a new standard of relevant, moving and engaging campaigns.”
Will Doherty, Vice President of Business Development at Index Exchange, said: “Since our partnership with Unruly began in 2014, we’ve grown together as the market has shifted due to the increase in consumer demand for transparent and relevant communication. It’s essential that programmatic buyers have solid metrics like favorability and brand recall to measure performance. It’s also great that they’ll now have the opportunity to amplify emotional creative with an emotion-based media buy. It’s an exciting time for our partner, and we’re pleased to support them in their next growth phase.”
###
About Unruly
Unruly gets videos seen, shared and loved across the open web for brands that want to move people, not just reach people. By bringing emotional intelligence to digital advertising, we help 91% of Ad Age 100 brands inform and inspire 1.44bn people around the world, using polite outstream formats on sites that people love. UnrulyX, the viewable video SSP, creates better ad experiences for consumers, improved brand outcomes for advertisers and increased revenues for top-flight publishers.
Emotion matters in marketing. Emotion creates values and sets preferences. Inspires action. Drives sales. Unruly has a decade’s data of consumer responses to video and uses that to hone content, model audiences and deploy ad dollars in ways that heighten emotional response and maximise brand impact. Unruly was founded in 2006 and acquired by News Corp (NASDAQ: NWS, NWSA; ASX: NWS, NWSLV) in 2015. With 300 Unrulies across 20 locations worldwide, our super power is emotional intelligence and our secret weapon is passionate people on a mission to #DeliverWow.
About Nielsen
Nielsen Holdings plc (NYSE: NLSN) is a global performance management company that provides a comprehensive understanding of what consumers Watch and Buy. Nielsen’s Watch segment provides media and advertising clients with Total Audience measurement services across all devices where content — video, audio and text — is consumed. The Buy segment offers consumer packaged goods manufacturers and retailers the industry’s only global view of retail performance measurement. By integrating information from its Watch and Buy segments and other data sources, Nielsen provides its clients with both world-class measurement as well as analytics that help improve performance. Nielsen, an S&P 500 company, has operations in over 100 countries that cover more than 90 percent of the world’s population. For more information, visit www.nielsen.com
About Affectiva
Affectiva, an MIT Media Lab spin-off, is the pioneer in Emotion AI. Its patented emotion recognition software is built using computer vision, deep learning and the world’s largest emotion data repository of more than 4.5 million faces analyzed from 75 countries, amounting to more than 50 billion emotion data points. Affectiva’s SDKs and APIs enable developers to add emotion-sensing and analytics to their own mobile apps, games, devices, applications and digital experiences. Affectiva is also used by more than 1,400 brands to gather insight and analytics in consumer emotional engagement. Affectiva is privately held with backing from leading investors such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers and WPP. For more information: www.affectiva.com.
About Moodagent
Moodagent is a market pioneer in music data analysis, providing services to the world’s leading enterprises. The company’s competitive edge is engineered into its core technology, an intelligent system that automatically and precisely decodes every truly musical and emotional property in every song, directly from the audio signal. This allows for precise analysis of any media file that carries a soundtrack, blazing a new trail for analytics, ad targeting, discovery & recommendations.
