Emotions Don’t Lie: Introducing an Artificial Intelligence Tool to Measure Ad Effectiveness
(A2021-93722)

AUTHORS

Patrick Kremer, Goethe University Frankfurt; Benjamin Abdel-Karim, Goethe University Frankfurt; Patrick Felka, Goethe University Frankfurt; Ju-Young Kim, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt; Oliver Hinz, Goethe University Frankfurt

ABSTRACT

The role of emotions in advertising has long been studied. Yet, in-depth insights into how emotions develop throughout the ad exposure and the effects on ad effectiveness are scarce. To address this research gap we develop a new AI-based tool to measure consumer emotions in real time utilizing readily available smartphone sensors for inexpensive scalability of this solution. The findings of our study suggest that emotional ads increase recall over a rather monotonous and unemotional ad. Furthermore, the results hint on the fact that variations of emotions throughout the ad exposure elevate recall over emotional ads that mainly focus on one specific emotional target (e.g. happiness). Concluding, we highlight the importance of this novel tool for theory as well as for practitioners which become enabled to rely on data gathered in the field via smartphone sensors instead of artificially constructed copy tests.