Mobile-minded: The small screen isn’t so small

Today, people tune into content whenever and wherever they want. With viewing happening at home on a TV and on the go on a smartphone, marketers want to ensure that their messages are being received no matter the screen. To determine whether their advertising is effective, marketers have traditionally turned to self-reported market research techniques, but those approaches have limitations. Enter neuromarketing, which according to the Neuromarketing Science and Business Association “is the systematic collection and interpretation of neurological and neurophysiological insights about individuals using different protocols allowing researchers to explore non-verbal and unconscious physiological responses to various stimuli for the purposes of market research.” Though still in its infancy as a marketing research practice, neuromarketing is giving marketers a direct view into people’s physical reactions to stimuli rather than relying solely on people’s ability to report their own feelings to that stimuli.

Facebook commissioned SalesBrain, a US-based neuromarketing agency, to understand how people’s brains and physiology respond to identical stimuli viewed on a smartphone versus on a TV. The study focused on how the brain responds to four key areas: engagement, attention, emotion and retention. We recently spoke with Helen Crossley, Head of Audience Insights for Facebook IQ, Dr Christophe Morin, Founder and CEO of SalesBrain, and Dr Paul Zak, President of ZESTxLabs, to understand the methodology behind the research, the results and what the results means for marketers. Edited excerpts of our conversation follow.

Helen: Facebook IQ recently conducted a significant piece of research to explore how people share – and share in – the moments that matter to them on Facebook and Instagram. What we have seen is that, with the advent of mobile, we’re moving from fewer bigger, longer moments manufactured by the media and marketing industry to a time when people are manufacturing and consuming their own moments en masse, every day, 365 days a year. Given that people are processing so many moments every day, we sought to understand how exactly people are processing those moments – from a physiological and neurological standpoint – and how that processing varies depending on the screen.

Dr Morin: By monitoring the direct response of advertising on people's brains, on their nervous systems, we are able to pick up objective measurements that we can trust, and understand and predict the effect of advertising.

Dr Zak: To our knowledge, this is the first time that a neuroscience study has compared adverts watched on a mobile device to adverts watched on TV.

Helen: In scoping this study with Dr Zak and Dr Morin, we wanted to design an advert experience that best represented how people view adverts on a smartphone and on a TV. We created a test environment where participants viewed a stimulus while watching a TV show or while scrolling through a Facebook News Feed.

Dr Zak: Multiple neurological measures were taken to capture the unconscious responses of the 70 volunteer participants. At the ZESTxLabs, we were then able to observe autonomic measures, such as sweat, heart rate and eye movements, as well as brain activity measured via electroencephalogram (EEG) when they viewed a stimulus on either a smartphone or a TV.

Helen: We also surveyed the participants to understand their message recall of the stimulus on the smartphone and on the TV.

Dr Zak: The participants were randomly split into two groups, accounting for age and gender. First the participants completed a baseline measure. Then each group viewed a set of stimulus adverts, which ranged from movie trailers to brand adverts and varied in length from 30-120 seconds. Group one viewed the stimulus on a TV first then a smartphone. Group two completed the same set of exercises as Group one, except those participants began with a smartphone and then viewed the adverts on a TV.

Helen: Overall, people were more attentive and tended to feel more positively toward the information presented on a mobile phone than on a TV. With TV, people’s brains were more distracted and had to work harder to process the information. We found that overall, mobile was on par with TV with regard to emotional intensity and engagement. Having said that, emotions and engagement were significantly higher for a couple of the adverts. People were equally likely to be as engaged on mobile as they were on TV.

As an added layer on top of the neuro research, we also saw an uplift in message recall when participants viewed the stimuli on TV followed by viewing it on a smartphone.

Dr Morin: It is our conclusion that the smartphone experience is more immersive than the experience of TV viewing overall. When the same advert stimulus played on a smartphone, the reaction was greater than TV on both attention and positive emotion, and, to some degree, on engagement, which was quite remarkable.

Helen: We also saw some initial results on the complementary nature of the 2 screens. In analysing the post-exposure survey, there was an uplift in message recall when a participant viewed the same stimulus on a TV first, followed by a smartphone. By creating campaigns with cross-screen appeal, marketers can help to further drive the retention rates of their advertising.

Helen: Don’t overlook mobile. Our physical closeness to the mobile screen has shifted our perception of the size of the device. It’s drawing us in to be more attentive and feel more positively about the content that is presented on it and creating opportunities for marketers to connect with people.

Maximise your message. Create campaigns that appeal not only to the right senses but also the right screens. Appeal to people who are mobile-minded by being more efficient in your messaging, putting the key messages points within the first ten seconds and taking advantage of cross-screen opportunities to extend your reach.

And test your approach. Use a combination of market research techniques to understand the effectiveness of your campaign. By aligning your business objectives and your campaign approach, marketers can evaluate and refine their mobile marketing strategies to best reach the right people.

Source: “Neuro Mobile” by SalesBrain (study of US adults commissioned by Facebook), May 2015.