What Is behind In-Stream Advertising on YouTube? A Remote Neuromarketing Study employing Eye-Tracking and Facial Coding techniques.

Not all elements displayed in a YouTube in-stream video ad are attributable to the ad itself. Some of those are automatically introduced by the platform, such as the countdown timer and the time progress bar. In recent years, some authors started exploring the effects associated with the presence of such non-ad items, providing valuable findings. However, objective evaluation of viewers' visual attention is lacking in this context as well as emotional investigation. In addition, previous research showed how the manipulation of seemingly negligible details can yield dramatically different outcomes in the context of in-stream advertising. To extend knowledge, the authors explored the effects of the non-ad items' presence by employing eye-tracking and facial coding techniques in combination with self-reports in a between-subjects experimental design focusing on the YouTube 15-s, mid-roll, non-skippable in-stream ad format. Results showed that the ad format currently employed by YouTube performs worse than its equivalent without the non-ad items on all the investigated measures and than its equivalent in which the non-ad items' presence was experimentally reduced on facial coding disgust, self-reported disgust, ad irritation, and ad attitude. Managerial insights and challenges concerning the future of in-stream advertising and neuromarketing are highlighted.

The Sample Size Matters: To What Extent the Participant Reduction Affects the Outcomes of a Neuroscientific Research. A Case-Study in Neuromarketing Field.

The sample size is a crucial concern in scientific research and even more in behavioural neurosciences, where besides the best practice it is not always possible to reach large experimental samples. In this study we investigated how the outcomes of research change in response to sample size reduction. Three indices computed during a task involving the observations of four videos were considered in the analysis, two related to the brain electroencephalographic (EEG) activity and one to autonomic physiological measures, i.e., heart rate and skin conductance. The modifications of these indices were investigated considering five subgroups of sample size (32, 28, 24, 20, 16), each subgroup consisting of 630 different combinations made by bootstrapping n (n = sample size) out of 36 subjects, with respect to the total population (i.e., 36 subjects). The correlation analysis, the mean squared error (MSE), and the standard deviation (STD) of the indexes were studied at the participant reduction and three factors of influence were considered in the analysis: the type of index, the task, and its duration (time length). The findings showed a significant decrease of the correlation associated to the participant reduction as well as a significant increase of MSE and STD (p < 0.05). A threshold of subjects for which the outcomes remained significant and comparable was pointed out. The effects were to some extents sensitive to all the investigated variables, but the main effect was due to the task length. Therefore, the minimum threshold of subjects for which the outcomes were comparable increased at the reduction of the spot duration.

Smoke signals: A study of the neurophysiological reaction of smokers and non-smokers to smoking cues inserted into antismoking public service announcements.

Tobacco addiction is one of the biggest health emergencies in the world, Antismoking Public Service Announcements (PSAs) represent the main public tool against smoking; however, smoking-related cues (SCs) often included in PSAs can trigger ambiguous cerebral reactions that could impact the persuasiveness and efficacy of the antismoking message. This study aimed to investigate the electroencephalographic (EEG) response in adult smokers and non-smokers during the exposure to SCs presented in antismoking PSAs video, in order to identify eventual neurophysiological features of SCs' 'boomerang effect' elicited in smokers. EEG frontal Alpha asymmetry and frontal Theta were analyzed in 92 adults (30 no smokers, 31 low smokers, 31 high smokers) from EEG recorded during the vision of 3 antismoking PSAs, statistical analysis was conducted using ANOVA. Main results showed a significant interaction between smoking cue condition (Pre and Post) and smoking habit (in particular for female heavy smokers) for the frontal Alpha asymmetry. Since the relative higher right frontal Alpha activity is associated with approach towards a stimulus, it is suggested that the relative left frontal Alpha increase in response to SCs might reflect an appetitive approach in response to it. In the light of the Incentive Sensitization Theory, this pattern can be interpreted as a neurophysiological signal in response to SCs that could undermine the message's effectiveness contributing to the maintenance of the addiction.

Consumer Behaviour through the Eyes of Neurophysiological Measures: State-of-the-Art and Future Trends.

The new technological advances achieved during the last decade allowed the scientific community to investigate and employ neurophysiological measures not only for research purposes but also for the study of human behaviour in real and daily life situations. The aim of this review is to understand how and whether neuroscientific technologies can be effectively employed to better understand the human behaviour in real decision-making contexts. To do so, firstly, we will describe the historical development of neuromarketing and its main applications in assessing the sensory perceptions of some marketing and advertising stimuli. Then, we will describe the main neuroscientific tools available for such kind of investigations (e.g., measuring the cerebral electrical or hemodynamic activity, the eye movements, and the psychometric responses). Also, this review will present different brain measurement techniques, along with their pros and cons, and the main cerebral indexes linked to the specific mental states of interest (used in most of the neuromarketing research). Such indexes have been supported by adequate validations from the scientific community and are largely employed in neuromarketing research. This review will also discuss a series of papers that present different neuromarketing applications, such us in-store choices and retail, services, pricing, brand perception, web usability, neuropolitics, evaluation of the food and wine taste, and aesthetic perception of artworks. Furthermore, this work will face the ethical issues arisen on the use of these tools for the evaluation of the human behaviour during decision-making tasks. In conclusion, the main challenges that neuromarketing is going to face, as well as future directions and possible scenarios that could be derived by the use of neuroscience in the marketing field, will be identified and discussed.

Antismoking Campaigns' Perception and Gender Differences: A Comparison among EEG Indices.

Human factors' aim is to understand and evaluate the interactions between people and tasks, technologies, and environment. Among human factors, it is possible then to include the subjective reaction to external stimuli, due to individual's characteristics and states of mind. These processes are also involved in the perception of antismoking public service announcements (PSAs), the main tool for governments to contrast the first cause of preventable deaths in the world: tobacco addiction. In the light of that, in the present article, it has been investigated through the comparison of different electroencephalographic (EEG) indices a typical item known to be able of influencing PSA perception, that is gender. In order to investigate the neurophysiological underpinnings of such different perception, we tested two PSAs: one with a female character and one with a male character. Furthermore, the experimental sample was divided into men and women, as well as smokers and nonsmokers. The employed EEG indices were the mental engagement (ME: the ratio between beta activity and the sum of alpha and theta activity); the approach/withdrawal (AW: the frontal alpha asymmetry in the alpha band); and the frontal theta activity and the spectral asymmetry index (SASI: the ratio between beta minus theta and beta plus theta). Results suggested that the ME and the AW presented an opposite trend, with smokers showing higher ME and lower AW than nonsmokers. The ME and the frontal theta also evidenced a statistically significant interaction between the kind of the PSA and the gender of the observers; specifically, women showed higher ME and frontal theta activity for the male character PSA. This study then supports the usefulness of the ME and frontal theta for purposes of PSAs targeting on the basis of gender issues and of the ME and the AW and for purposes of PSAs targeting on the basis of smoking habits.

Neurophysiological Measures of the Perception of Antismoking Public Service Announcements Among Young Population.

Tobacco constitutes a global emergency with totally preventable millions of deaths per year and smoking-related illnesses. Public service announcements (PSAs) are the main tool against smoking and by now their efficacy is still assessed through questionnaires and metrics, only months after their circulation. The present study focused on the young population, because at higher risk of developing tobacco addiction, investigating the reaction to the vision of Effective, Ineffective and Awarded antismoking PSAs through: electroencephalography (EEG), autonomic activity variation (Galvanic skin response-GSR- and Heart Rate-HR-) and Eye-Tracking (ET). The employed indices were: the EEG frontal alpha band asymmetry and the frontal theta; the Emotional Index (EI), deriving from the GSR and HR signals matching; the ET Visual Attention (VA) index, based on the ratio between the total time spent fixating an area of interest (AOI) and its area. Smokers expressed higher frontal alpha asymmetry values in comparison to non-smokers. Concerning frontal theta, Awarded PSAs reported the highest values in comparison to both Effective and Ineffective PSAs. EI results highlighted that lowest values were expressed by Heavy Smokers (HS), and Effective PSAs obtained the highest EI values. Finally, concerning the Effective PSAs, regression analysis highlighted a correlation between the number of cigarettes smoked by participants (independent variable) and frontal alpha asymmetry, frontal theta and EI values. ET results suggested that for the Ineffective PSAs the main focus were texts, while for the Effective and Awarded PSAs were the visual elements. Results support the use of methods aimed at assessing the physiological reaction for the evaluation of PSAs images, in particular when considering the smoking habits of target populations.

Electroencephalographic, Heart Rate, and Galvanic Skin Response Assessment for an Advertising Perception Study: Application to Antismoking Public Service Announcements.

The evaluation of advertising, products, and packaging is traditionally performed through methods based on self-reports and focus groups, but these approaches often appear poorly accurate in scientific terms. Neuroscience is increasingly applied to the investigation of the neurophysiological bases of the perception of and reaction to commercial stimuli to support traditional marketing methods. In this context, a particular sector or marketing is represented by public service announcements (PSAs). The objective of this protocol is to apply electroencephalography (EEG) and autonomic signal analysis to study responses to selected antismoking PSAs. Two EEG indices were employed: the frontal alpha band EEG asymmetry (the Approach Withdrawal (AW) index) and the frontal theta (effort index). Furthermore, the autonomic Emotional Index (EI) was calculated, as derived from the Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) and Heart Rate (HR) signals. The present protocol describes a series of operational and computational steps required to properly estimate, through the aforementioned indices, the emotional and cerebral reaction of a group of subjects towards a selected number of antismoking PSAs. In particular, a campaign characterized by a symbolic communication style (classified as "awarded" on the basis of the prizes received by specialized committees) obtained the highest approach values, as estimated by the AW index. A spot and an image belonging to the same PSA campaign based on the "fear arousing appeal" and with a narrative/experiential communication style (classified as "effective" on the basis of the economical/health-related improvements promoted) reported the lowest and highest effort values, respectively. This is probably due to the complexity of the storytelling (spot) and to the immediateness of the image (a lady who underwent a tracheotomy). Finally, the same "effective" campaign showed the highest EI values, possibly because of the empathy induced by the testimonial and the explicitness of the message.

Neurophysiological tools to investigate consumer's gender differences during the observation of TV commercials.

Neuromarketing is a multidisciplinary field of research whose aim is to investigate the consumers' reaction to advertisements from a neuroscientific perspective. In particular, the neuroscience field is thought to be able to reveal information about consumer preferences which are unobtainable through conventional methods, including submitting questionnaires to large samples of consumers or performing psychological personal or group interviews. In this scenario, we performed an experiment in order to investigate cognitive and emotional changes of cerebral activity evaluated by neurophysiologic indices during the observation of TV commercials. In particular, we recorded the electroencephalographic (EEG), galvanic skin response (GSR), and heart rate (HR) in a group of 28 healthy subjects during the observation of a series of TV advertisements that have been grouped by commercial categories. Comparisons of cerebral indices have been performed to highlight gender differences between commercial categories and scenes of interest of two specific commercials. Findings show how EEG methodologies, along with the measurements of autonomic variables, could be used to obtain hidden information to marketers not obtainable otherwise. Most importantly, it was suggested how these tools could help to analyse the perception of TV advertisements and differentiate their production according to the consumer's gender.