Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research

More Than Market Research - Gain The Information Advantage

Tom H. C. Anderson - Next Gen Market Research header image 6
← Brand Festival 2010! The Evolution from Business Intelligence to Personal Intelligence →

A Little Fun With Next Gen Market Research

July 29th, 2010 · 11 Comments

Pamela Anderson teaches us about eye tracking - Who said market research can’t be sexy?

Because Pamela Anderson sometimes gets mixed up in Anderson Analytics’ social media SEO data, I happened on a blog post the other day that used her image as an example of eye tracking and heat map technology (see two images below).

I’ve tried next gen market research firm iMotions eye tracking software before, and it occurred to me that the focus areas in the example above seemed a little ‘off’. I posted the url to the NGMR linkedIn group forum, and by the next morning my friend Peter Hartzbech in Copenhagen had run his own internal tests:

The above data is from four males at the iMotions office. Conducting the test with all four respondents apparently took less than 10 minutes. Looking at the aggregated heatmap and spotlight analysis above, as I expected iMotions software is quite a bit more accurate and detailed.

Adding to the ‘insight’ is the gaze replay movie below (check out when the guy in the lower left corner smiles)

Tack Peter! A fun little diversion.

Who said Next Gen Market Research can’t be sexy & fun!?! ;)

@TomHCAnderson

[Friday Ad-Hoc Eye Tracking Fun (from NGMR) Courtesy of iMotions]

[Post to Twitter] 

Tags: Advertising · Anderson Analytics · Market Research · Marketing · NGMR · Tom H. C. Anderson · Uncategorized · eye tracking · next gen market research

11 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Alberto Stracuzzi // Jul 29, 2010 at 10:27 am

    May I have a bit of mistrust…? Time spent on points 2 and 3 appears suspiciously… few…
    I don’t know if it’s a osftware bug… or else.. ;o)

  • 2 Emil // Jul 29, 2010 at 11:36 am

    It is always reassuring to know that you cannot outsmart the human condition, no matter how hard you try. :)

  • 3 Ian Straus // Jul 29, 2010 at 2:10 pm

    Now what would you suggest as a method of idnetifying the better and worse providers of eye tracking data, from the technical standpoint?

  • 4 Tom H C Anderson // Jul 29, 2010 at 3:14 pm

    I know I could tell you what I would not suggest… ;)

    Seriously, that’s a good question. Perhaps Peter might want to answer it?

  • 5 Peter Hartzbech // Jul 30, 2010 at 12:49 am

    Dear Alberto,

    I think it can be explained due to the following reasons. Firstly a a face will always attract a lot of attention, so that is not surprising. In addition you can split an eye tracking session into to parts, 1) the sub-contious part, which is the first 1-2 seconds and then 2) the part where you are more rationally aware of what you are looking at. That’s why that you would have an average less time spent on the “lower” part of this image, since the respondents would probably behave “socially” correct. But the face does really attract a lot of attention on this image.

    No bugs in the software :)

    Best regards,

    Peter

  • 6 Peter Hartzbech // Jul 30, 2010 at 12:55 am

    Dear Ian,

    With regards to the eye tracking vendors, I can give you some hints. Basically it depends on what kind of tests you want to conduct. If you want plug and play eye tracking hardware for usability and market research, we always recommend SMI and Tobii eye tracking hardware. Here you have a good basis for the hardware platform with high stable frame rates, which is really the key when using eye tracking. For software those 2 companies have software and then the Attention Tool from iMotions is the only global software that go across the different hardware platforms, which might be a good option for you. There are not many high quality solutions out there. If you need more info, we can take a talk about it at your convenience.

    Best regards,

    Peter

  • 7 Meta Brown // Jul 30, 2010 at 8:36 am

    Of course, if her name were Pamela Zwolinski you would never, ever have tripped into that blog post.

  • 8 Tom H C Anderson // Jul 30, 2010 at 8:39 am

    Since this was so interesting we’re thinking of running a few more of these test exercises. Anyone have any good content suggestions? :)

  • 9 Tom H C Anderson // Jul 30, 2010 at 11:16 am

    Just looking at yesterdays stats for Google Analytics, very nice spike in uniques! Wondering if it’s more because of Next Gen Market Research techniques and eye tracking software or Pamela Anderson? Perhaps a little of both

  • 10 Holly S. Carroll // Jul 31, 2010 at 2:20 pm

    Good article - thanks for sharing. I like to see fun at work..even if it is accidental!

  • 11 Laurel Earhart // Aug 11, 2010 at 1:09 am

    The eye tracking technology, incidentally, is used for reasons beyond research for advertising effectiveness. I have a daughter with autism, and the same technology is used to determine the degree of impairment; those with more severe cases consistently avoid looking at faces, but may be drawn to objects such as a necklace, or, “the lower portion” of the screen.

    To Peter Hartzbech’s point, being aware of the social norms is something that causes us to look back to the face… at least for those of us without autism. Those with any degree of autism are generally pretty clueless about those social norms.

    Those of us who are around autistic or aspberger’s individuals a lot pretty much have to get used to the chest-staring.

Leave a Comment