'Neurobiotesting'

Market research has traditionally been heavily reliant upon the academic fields of statistics, sociology and psychology but in recent years, technologies more related to medicine and biology have been attracting attention.

Around the turn of the millennium we looked into eye tracking technologies for testing people's interaction with websites. We reached the conclusion that this type of testing was great for testing very specific aspects of a website but harder to use to explain the overall experience or the user's reactions and behaviour on the site.

Soon after I received an offer to test using MRI scans to measure brain activity in response to advertising and websites - unfortunately I didn't have the time to look into it further. More recently, this type of research has been attracting quite a bit of attention. Even Spanish gossip TV programs have lie detectors ready to probe the almost-famous and wannabes in their hunt for the most salacious insight possible.

The New York Times recently covered how start-up research companies such as Neurofocus and Emsense are using MRI scans to help work out which ads create a better response and engage viewers. Earlier this week the International Herald Tribune reported how Disney are building biometric research facilities in Austin to test different technologies and advertising formats.

In the Times article, the head of Virgin Mobile's research in the US said he wasn't a fan of ad testing but found this type of research useful. If I was ever asked I think I'd respond, "I'm not a huge fan of ad testing but it is useful. Biometric and 'neuro' research make an interesting addition when I have plenty of budget, want to indulge my sadistic impulses and can convince enough participants to irradiate themselves."

Emsense used their 'neuro' testing to demonstrate that award winning ads really do engage consumers more than the average garden ad. So now we know ad awards are rewarding more than creatives' self-love.

What would be most interesting is a comparative study to see how well focus groups, depth interviews and surveys can identift these responses, compared with 'neuro' testing. Are groups or depths better at identifying emotional responses? Can surveys alone do the job?

It is always fun playing around with the latest technology, unless you are the poor participant rigged up like a lab rat. Is that pupil dilation due to: A) the wires the participant has stuck to them; B) the laser being shot into their eyes; C) the MRI scanner shooting radiation through them; or D) an emotional response to the ad in front of them?

Unfortunately, none of these technologies, not even MRI scans, can tell us what people are thinking or their subconscious reactions. 'Neuro' and 'bio' testing give us some wonderful clues as to the class of reaction being generated, helping explain how and when we react to different stimuli but these tests tell us little about exactly what that reaction is and why is it being generated.

To understand why we react to an ad in a particular fashion still forces us to fall back on asking someone to explain themselves in a group or do some task to help us infer their motivations. An imprecise science and a difficult art...