The BBC Is Using Facial Coding Technology to Monitor the Effectiveness of Branded Content

It’s not easy to prove the effectiveness of a branded content campaign, but the BBC feels it has come up with a solid solution for its valued brand partners. The iconic global media company's BBC StoryWorks team is demonstrating a new way of measuring how engaged an audience is with branded and sponsored content on its TV and digital platforms. Working with a paid panel of viewers, the BBC is partnering with emotion-inspired artificial intelligence company, CrowdEmotion on this endeavor. Using the company’s bespoke technology, it tracks a viewer's micro-facial expressions while watching content, and links them to emotions. The technology takes second-by-second measurements of six key emotional states. This happens while the eye-tracking identifies the relationship between what’s being viewed, and the emotions experienced at that time. Facial coding has the benefit of providing insight into how people really feel, rather than how they say they feel, so it's more likely to be an accurate reflection—plus it can track emotions throughout the content, rather than just get an overview at the end. “There is a lot of data around traditional advertising, but this new technology allows us to turn around results quickly, demonstrating to our brand partners how our panelists are reacting to the content in a tangible way,” said svp, content, BBC advertising and Head of BBC StoryWorks Richard Pattinson. This technology was tested on a series produced by the BBC's Asia Pacific StoryWorks team, called Huawei: The Explorers. [kickout id="1"] According to the BBC, the test identified that the predominant feelings among the panelists were happiness, surprise and curiosity, and pinpointed the exact moments which generated the most emotional impact. In addition, the product showed that the creative execution succeeded in driving a clear uplift in subconscious association between Huawei and key brand attributes such as being innovative, inspiring, environmentally responsible and high-quality. Following exposure, audiences also had a high desire to engage with the Huawei brand; brand awareness rose by 216 percent, brand association went up by 23 percent and purchase intent increased by 19 percent. “It’s early days, but we have received positive feedback from our brand partners in Asia, and we’re in the process of showing this technology to a couple of brand partners in the U.S. and elsewhere,” said Pattinson.