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Neuromarketing Advertising Research

  • Test the impact of your commercial
  • EEG measures attention, emotion and memory with the precision of a millisecond
  • Processing time: 1 week

Discover what makes your commercial successful

Does your commercial stand out? Is it being understood by consumers? Is it connected to your brand? Does the expression strike the right chord emotionally? And does it encourage to take action?

These are all questions that come up every time you set up a new advertising campaign - and which can be clearly answered by using EEG.

Test your ad in our Multiclient Test

Starting from 4950,-
Results within 5 business days withpractical advice!
Newest and validated brain imaging

Predict impact of your commercial

The influence of commercials is subconscious and subtle. Traditional advertising tests are just partly able to catch these effects. Neuromarketing research makes it possible to measure the actual impact of your advertising.

Neuromarketing advertising research takes away a great deal of the insecurities regarding the effect of your advertising campaign. Brain research with the use of EEG provides insights in the performance on essential Neuro KPIā€™s attention, memory, emotion and buying motivation. This brain data is proven - more than any other method - really powerful in predicting actual preferences and choices of your customers.

By comparing your neuro performance data with Unravelā€™s category specific benchmarks, you can see exactly how your advertisements perform compared to other companies in your branch.

Increase impact of your commercial

EEG has one big advantage over other brain measurement techniques: its immense high speed.

EEG measures fluctuations in attention, emotion and effort accurately to the millisecond. As a result you can see clearly what scenes work well - and which can profit by a little tweak. Consequently, you will be able to optimize your commercial and gain insights that you can implement in future campaigns.

Tim Zuidgeest

Or discuss the possibilities with Tim, our Lead Consultant
View availability and schedule an online appointment

ā€œThe neuro-research was of real value to us. For our new campaign we have consciously chosen neuro-research. That way we will not get socially desirable answers, but real insightsā€
Ingrid de Jong - Brand Manager Pearle

How it works: Neuro advertising research with EEG

The brain processes commercials extremely fast and mostly subconsciously. Many of the responses will never become conscious, but they do influence the effect instore. Neuro research measures these responses.

The neuromarketing advertising research of Unravel using Eye Tracking and EEG to objectively measure what an advertisement triggers in the target audience.

Our Weekly Multiclient

Neuromarketing methods are becoming increasingly popular in advertising testing. That's why, in addition to our custom surveys, we also conduct weekly multi-client surveys.

With a standard target group (representative of the Netherlands), several customers can simultaneously test accessible commercials, online videos and other expressions.

You will receive the analysis of your commercial with interim practical optimization tips within five working days. If you are interested, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Custom Ad Testing

In addition to our weekly multi-client survey, we also conduct custom advertising surveys. With a specific target group and one or more communications, we can answer both general and specific marketing issues.

Custom research can also be completed within 5 working days, where you will receive an extensive analysis including optimization tips and answers to your marketing question.

EEG shows everything that a survey does not tell you.

Brain activity and viewer patterns give insights into the authentic response of consumers. It offers a deeper and more objective alternative for the more subjective dimensions of surveys and interviews. The most important neuro KPI's are:

  • Desire: Does the commercial encourage consumers to buy a product?
  • Attention: Does the commercial grab the attention of the consumer well enough to communicate the brand?
  • Workload: Is the commercial easy to process?
  • Neural synchronicity: The extent to which there is synchrony in neural activity of respondents. This metric is found to be most predictive of sales impact

No black box

All our EEG metrics are public and are supported by scientific publications from peer reviewed journals. See the FAQ for an overview of publications per metric.

Comparison with benchmark

Data will only be of value once compared with a valuable benchmark ? Unravel has a database consisting of neuro performance scores of more than 600 commercials. This enables us to provide a representative benchmark for many different industry categories, in order to get more insights out of your data.

Learn more about what does work

What exactly makes your commercial successful? Neurodata can reveal accurately up to the millisecond which elements are beneficial towards attention, memory and purchase activation.

Many advertising mistakes are avoidable

A missing text. A character turning his or her back to the viewer. An illogical sentence of a voice-over. These are just a few of the many unintended emotional dips we see in our studies. Many of those imperfections can be smoothed out quickly and easily in the editing, without destroying the core concept of the commercial.

Tim Zuidgeest

Or discuss the possibilities with Tim, our Lead Consultant
View availability and schedule an online appointment

Timeline of a project

Unravel Research uses extensively optimized and automated data collection and analysis. This allows us to offer unparalleled 5-day project lead times for brand asset research in the market.
  • Day 1-3: Field work

    The field work usually takes 3 days in which we will be testing with 20 respondents. We can perform a neuromarketing commercial test both as stand-alone (with a specific target group and several expressions) or contribute to a multi-client research (with only one expression).
  • Day 4-5: Data analysis & Report

    The challenge is to move from the individual brain data to the aggregated data on group level. In order to do this, the raw brain data will first be decontaminated and thereafter it will be converted to individual normalized metrics for attention, workload, and engagement. The result of this complex analysis is surprisingly easy: a clear data video with the metrics plotted from millisecond to millisecond.
Tim Zuidgeest

Or discuss the possibilities with Tim, our Lead Consultant
View availability and schedule an online appointment

Extra Research Modules

It is possible to combine a neuromarketing advertising research with a survey measuring traditional impact metrics:

  • Memory
  • Message understanding
  • Valuation
  • Associations

Output examples

Curious what a complete report looks like? As the reports for our clients are confidential we made an example report.

You can download it below:

Facts

> 600

Commercials tested

5

days lead time

Validated

transparent and proven metrics
Tim Zuidgeest

Or discuss the possibilities with Tim, our Lead Consultant
View availability and schedule an online appointment

Output Example Advertising Research

Placement of the EEG

EEG + Eye Tracking Glasses

Research in a Realistic Setting

Close-up Research in Unravel's Living Room Lab

Advertising Research with EEG

Frequently asked questions

What is the validation behind EEG in neuromarketing advertising research?
Unravel does not work with mysterious ā€˜Black boxā€™ metrics where underlying brain activity remains hidden. All the metrics we use are extensively validated and documented - within and outside the context of marketing.
What measures the EEG exactly?

EEG measures the electrical activity in the brain. This activity fluctuates constantly as a result of ion channels in neurons in the brain. EEG is capable of measuring this activity multiple times per second, which makes this method especially useful for testing dynamic stimuli such as commercials.

The raw data is being contaminated by algorithms, whereafter we extract four scientifically validated metrics:Ā 

  • Approach motivation/Desire (ā€˜I want thisā€™)
  • Engagement (ā€˜That is interestingā€™)
  • Workload (ā€˜This is hardā€™)
  • Confusion (ā€˜That is strangeā€™)

These EEG metrics provide an enriched view on the experience of commercials. Approach motivation can be considered the most important metric for predicting buying behavior. Engagement, Workload and Confusion offer substantial depth in the qualitative analysis of the commercial, in which we analyse how the viewer experiences the commercial per scene.

Can my commercial participate in multi-client research?

Each first week of the month a multi-client research takes place in Unravelā€™s lab. The multi-client study is carried out with a group of 20 respondents who can be considered a good representation of society regarding gender, age and education.Ā 

If you participate in a multi-client study, you can test only one of your commercials.Ā 

Would you likeĀ  to test more commercials or do you have specific target group needs?

In that case, you can get a customized neuromarketing advertising study.Ā 

For participation in a multi-client study you can send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.Ā 

Does the neuromarketing commercial test also include survey questions?

Before and after the commercials we will ask for the attitudes per brand. We will map both the explicit attitudes (using survey responses) and implicit attitudes (using EEG response during the brand exposure).Ā 

The difference in scores between both measuring moments will provide a good picture of the impact of commercials on branding.Ā 

Optionally, we can also test for intermediate campaign metrics, such as:Ā 

  • Understanding
  • Recall
  • AppreciationĀ 

Hereby, we would like to emphasize that metrics such as these do not relate strongly to the success of campaigns. Explicit understanding, recall and appreciation correlate only slightly with sales and should therefore be considered mainly as qualitative add-ons.Ā 

More about this in our blog: Ā https://www.unravelresearch.com/en/blog/effective-ad-pre-testing-alternatives

What does a normal session within a neuro advertising test look like?

In a normal neuromarketing advertising test, between 20 to 30 respondents visit the Unravel Lab in Utrecht to participate in the study. Here, they will be equipped with EEG and Eye Tracking, after which they are shown a TV program interrupted by a block of commercials. This contains a randomized set of commercials including the target commercial.Ā 

Respondentsā€™ brain activity and viewing patterns are measured while watching in a comfortable way. We can measure accurately up to the second how the brain reacts in terms of attention, desire in and memory activation.Ā 

Our clients

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