How ad agencies are reading your mind before you buy?

Your eye movement, your grin, facial changes help them

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Forget age-old surveys to know the mind of a customer. Things have changed dramatically with increasing technological advancement that advertisers are trying to tap the unconscious state of human mind which determines their spending decisions.

As per reports, various multi-national companies all around the world are making use of gadgets which help them monitor the eye movement of customers, momentary grin, facial changes, and even measuring the brain activity. With the help of these gadgets, companies aim to tap the raw emotions of customers which will reveal the exact mindset of them before they make the buying decision.

This new technique in the word of marketing is mainly led by ad agencies that believe in the vast infinity of artificial intelligence. "It's not that people won't tell you, they actually can't tell you why they're making the decision they're making," said Jessica Azoulay, vice-president of the market intelligence practice at Isobar, The Hindu reports.

Elisa Moses, the chief executive of the neuro and behavioral science business at Ipsos reveals that facial coding will help to analyze the driving factor which made the customer make a buying decision. The ad-intelligence has surpassed even humans in terms why they like a particular product or not.

"These gadgets enable us to capture many different types of emotions and to be able to profile the emotions that are happening very granularly on a second by second basis. People won't be able to tell you that something irritated them in scene three or thrilled them in scene seven, but we'll know from looking at the facial coding," explained Moses.

Eye Tracking test

This is one of the most common techniques used to analyze the subconscious minds of the customer before they make a buying decision. The eye tracking test uses technology-enhanced glasses equipped with a camera to record what the person is seeing, and how much time fixes his eye on the particular object.

Electroencephalography (EEG), that is used to determine brain waves for patients, is another technique being used by companies to understand the brain activity through sensors on a person's head, of course, at a clinical level.

Recently, multinational health products giant Johnson and Johnson has tested thousands of consumers about Tylenol pain relief and other over-the-counter products showing them quick images and words which connote a particular emotion.

As several techniques like these are gaining popularity, the entire market formula will be changed and the shadow monitoring of companies will continue exploring more innovative ideas in the coming years. So, it's not Big Brother who's watching you but your own gadgets which are being manipulated to pass on the information.

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