100 More Things #147: JOY AND SURPRISE GRAB AND HOLD ATTENTION IN VIDEO ADS

Teixeira’s research shows that joy and surprise are the emotions that keep people watching a video ad. Because people don’t like ads and want to skip them, ads that stimulate both joy and surprise early on are the ones that grab and hold attention best.

Teixeira used software that analyzes facial expressions to research the influence of emotions on ad watching. The researchers collected data every 250 milliseconds while people watched video ads. Each participant saw 28 video ads. Fourteen of them had emotional content and 14 were neutral. The neutral ads were interspersed with the emotional ads.

Half of the emotional ads were designed to evoke joy, measured with smiles and laughter, and the other half to evoke surprise, measured with raised eyebrows and an open mouth. The ads varied. Some were for beverages, some for phones, some for financial services, and so on. Some were for well-known brands and others for lesser known brands.

Participants could either watch each ad to the end, “zap” to the next ad, or click on a link that would take them to the ad brand’s web page. (These were one-page mock-up websites that were kept short and simple).

The researchers found the following results:

• Both joy and surprise grabbed the attention of the participants, but surprise grabbed attention more than joy, and joy was better than surprise in keeping people viewing longer.
• The best strategy for grabbing attention was what the researchers called a “peak and stable trajectory”—heighten the emotion and then leave it high.
• However, the best strategy to retain viewers was a “peak-valley-peak” strategy—heighten emotion, then let it die down, then bring it back up again, and continue alternating (an emotional roller coaster).

Takeaways

• To grab attention in a video ad, put something surprising at the beginning of the ad.
• To retain attention during a video ad, use content that evokes joy.
• To sustain attention, vary the amount of joy and surprise or any other emotions, so that people are having an emotionally up-and-down experience.