According to an article from Wired.com, there are companies utilizing biometric data to determine our reactions to certain advertisements. When you simply ask a person whether or not they liked an advertisement, their verbal reports may not actually align with how the ad really impacted them. I’m not saying we are a bunch of liars who can’t realize how we feel or what we think, but what is true is we may inflate or deflate our reactions based on whether the ad content is socially acceptable or not. In other words, if I watch an ad that has lots of gore and violence, but it truly strikes me and makes me think about the product more, I may say I didn’t like it because I’m not supposed to advocate violence. However, in reality the ad struck me and affected me on a much deeper level.

By utilizing biometric information (meaning pulse rate, amount of sweat secretions from your glands, eye movement, and facial muscles reactions), scientists can actually derive a “truer” response rate to advertising to determine what types of ads people pay attention to and prefer. By collecting this type of data, companies can develop scientifically-based advertisements so they can (hopefully) use every penny of their advertising budget wisely.

A company has been using this biometric technology to tap into the unconscious processing of groups of people while they watch television advertising. They aggregate the data from the large group (usually about fifty people all watching the same material) and determine which features of ads are more attractive, captivate, and hold people’s attention.

This seems like a really neat way of using science to better hone what works and what doesn’t in advertising. It could have a whole host of potential uses with relation to social media as well, such as what characteristics of tweets are people more drawn to click on or respond to or how much social media can people truly digest and handle in an hour, day, week, or month. The developments in research in this newly emerging field will prove important and relevant for all organizations trying to vie for the general public’s attention.