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TV's Next Big Hit: Your Brain

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By RICHARD MULLINS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 8, 2008

TAMPA - Television ratings giant Nielsen would like to read your mind about advertisements you see, and it's taking a stake in a brain scan company to try to do just that.

The Nielsen Co. announced Thursday a "strategic investment" in NeuroFocus, a Berkeley, Calif.-based brain and neuroscience research company.

NeuroFocus specializes in an emerging field of study called neuromarketing, developing ways to track brainwaves, eye motion and skin conductance (sweating) to determine the effectiveness of advertising, branding, product packaging and product design.

The companies did not disclose financial terms of the deal.

"This alliance will enable us to gather truly unique insights about consumers' attitudes and behavior about which they themselves may not even be fully aware and will complement our other measures of consumer behavior," said Nielsen executive vice president Susan Whiting.

In other words, you may respond to that TV ad for Coke or Buick or HBO in ways that even you don't understand or admit.

The brain scanning the company does represents a scientific faction of marketing research, which uses volunteers to watch TV ads or interact with products under close monitoring to see what the subjects think while exposed to advertising.

With the NeuroFocus methods, consumers wear a cap embedded with electrical sensors that track brain responses as consumers interact with advertisements or marketing material. NeuroFocus claims to precisely determine which part of the marketing message consumers pay attention to, how they engage emotionally, and what part of the message is entered into memory.

NeuroFocus officials don't disclose which clients have signed up for this kind of research.

Nielsen's local operations involve a major television ratings campus that tracks what Americans watch on TV, so it's unlikely the brain research will directly affect Nielsen's operations here.

Rather, Nielsen expects to use NeuroFocus science for clients in consumer packaged goods, television, film and emerging media, the company said. Nielsen will use NeuroFocus methods as a permanent feature in Nielsen's labs at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas and the CityWalk area of Los Angeles, where Nielsen recruits people for advertisement research.

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at rmullins@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7919.

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