Assessing TV advertising effectiveness with eye tracking

YanHaas is a Colombia-based market research firm that performs advanced studies for clients in South America. The company uses Tobii Pro eye tracking to better understand how consumers perceive and engage with clients’ assets, such as ads and other marketing material.

Objective

YanHaas worked with multinational brand owner Team Foods to help optimize a TV commercial for a newly released cooking oil. The main objective was to evaluate the animatic before production of the final commercial to ensure a positive response and a 5% increase in ‘Top of Mind’ awareness. The company wanted to better understand the level of attention towards various elements of the ad, how effective the branding and messaging was, and what meaning viewers took away.

Method

After initial focus group studies, an animatic was created and tested using eye tracking on the target customer group: women aged 25-55. After viewing the animatic while being eye tracked, the respondents were asked to participate in a purely qualitative component of the study that used the Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique (ZMET) to assess emotional linkage via cognitive imagery.

Outcome

The study identified several elements of the TV commercial that were more appealing to the target customer, including the types of angles and imagery used in the commercial. The performance of the final commercial achieved a higher-than-average attention rate, and in some cases delivered a brand recall rate of 70%. The oil product featured in the commercial scored a total of 8 points in Top of Mind awareness evaluations among 100 brands. Testing advertising material is essential to ensure ROI is optimized, as even slight increases in attention can result in a higher brand recall and increased sales.

Related information

• Team Foods