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TV Networks Open Neuroscience Labs To Improve Their Shows and Ads (reuters.com)
An anonymous reader writes: NBCUniversal's recently-opened Orlando neuroscience lab is trying to develop methods of delivering advertisements related to the scene in the show preceding them, such as delivering a food advertisement directly after a scene which has been shown to make test-subjects hungry. Viacom is building a lab right now to take electroencephalagrams of viewers while they watch. "And ratings firm Nielsen Holdings, which just bought neuroscience firm Innerscope Research earlier this year, is adding facial coding and biometrics to its labs, which currently conduct eye tracking and perform EEGs." NBC doesn't trust what viewers say when asked for their opinion on shows. They want to use science to determine which scenes trigger an emotional response, whether the viewer acknowledges it or not.
>> NBC doesn't trust what viewers say when asked for their opinion on shows.
They shouldn't trust people's expressed opinions. How many people have you heard say naive things like "I'm not influenced by advertising" or "I do my own research"? And yet, advertising works, particularly because advertisers know where prospects go to "research" and get their pitches in there.
Response to individual scenes can vary depending on the entirety of the plot. Limiting it to measuring response to scenes will result in shows being filmed for pavlovian dogs, not for actual human beings.
Anyone who still believes google, facebook, et al when they tell you that targeted advertising is about "showing you ads for stuff you are interested in" is just plain ignorant.
These companies have multi-billion dollar valuations precisely because they hope to profile you to the point of being able to "press your buttons" so you will make poorly considered purchasing choices. Just like this NBC initiative hopes to provoke hungry people into making an impulse purchase of delivery pizza.
The only way for people to win the psycho-advertising is to opt out - don't let them profile you and try to avoid ads as much as you can (hard to do with product placement).
telling a meaningful story with an engaging plot, complex dialogue and interesting characters? or pinching out another Avengers/Batman/Bond/Furious? studios have decided the easiest way to make money is to paint with a shotgun, so its no surprise we get cognitive neuroscience involved.
The rules are already pretty simple: keep the dialogue at the 8th grade level and the characters simple. House is a meanie bo beanie, sheldon is a goofy nerd, and the team on NCIS follows such predictability they could be used as a canary to ensure a tv stations satellites were tracking properly. Combine your average sitcom with a healthy dose of product placement and well timed advertisements between painfully obvious and intentional cliffhangers and youve got yourself a riveting cinematic blockbuster thats sure to entertain some 300 pound navel-gazing white trash single mom for at least the 30 minutes it takes to chug a soda and finish a cold pizza.
the devils in the details. You cant expect to gain 10-15% profit quarterly and assume a product anything less than C grade is going to come out of the effort. it means rehash concepts, repeat plotlines, and a whole lot of commercial time. It means squeezing out stinkers like minions and then skull-fucking parents into everything from online games to fast food and clothing tie-ins because you dont have time for ideas. Exploiting basic human urges is simply a more cost effective means to ensure people who already watch this shit, continue to watch it.
Good people go to bed earlier.
language of the heart is virtually foolproof,,, truth mercy.... ask ed snowden your questions here on /. .continues... can our conscience etc.. be MANipulated? sing along... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zpYFAzhAZY
Blipverts!
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
The best we can hope for is that this is just some snake-oil fad that the ad guys sold the networks on.
If it actually works, it's just another step in the systematic exploitation of human cognitive limitations and bounded rationality. Exactly what wouldn't improve this situation. I hope the researchers are...suitably proud...of the good work they are doing there.
Why don't they just start allowing subliminal adverts in 1 or 2 frames again?
Maybe I was wrong to become a "cable cutter". This type of technology makes me want to sign back up! Manipulate me, big corps! I love being your bitch!
This doesn't bode well for future screenplays. Once they figure out what works, they'll write the scripts to sell the products. We'll be nostalgic for the days of mere product placement.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Jokes on you pal - I DVR all my shows and fast forward through the commercials. Sure you can pump in a ton of subliminal messaging, but those 30 second clips are never seen
I can't be the only one repulsed by the present day ads.
Especially during daytime - it's creeping to evenings now.
Because women are leaky things that spew matter from every orifice, men are the opposite, they have to put thingys up their weiners so they can pee. Drugs that might make you go on a killing rampage.
Vaginal mesh, mesothelioma, Call us so we can see who you can sue! Some wacky lady who is obsessed with pooping, and probiotics. J.G. Wentworth "It's my money and I need cash now!"
Dancing millenials. Did I mention dancing millenials? Do we have to have dancing millenials break into a dance because their Totino's pizza rolls came out of the microwave? Or found a piece of furniture online?
When they tortured the guy in A Clockwork Orange" they could have just used today's commercials.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Please, if you have atypical emotional or physical responses to stimuli, you must volunteer for these studies. You will be doing a service to the rest of humanity.
What we need is people who respond with intense hunger when they see cute kittens, a desire to pee when confronted with a laugh track, a desire to shoot the TV when watching rom coms.
Seriously, things are pretty bad when every other ad is for some obscure prescription drug. I mean really, how many people have non-24 to the point of justifying an expensive TV ad? And the ads are stupid, too. Show a bunch of people going about their daily lives set to music while the narrator spends 50 seconds telling you about all the possible side-effects. Dumb.
Ads? What are those? I'm afraid my torrent provider doesn't offer this service.
We have ads everywhere these days, except in our dreams.
Fight for your bitcoins!
thats sure to entertain some 300 pound navel-gazing white trash single mom for at least the 30 minutes it takes to chug a soda and finish a cold pizza
Why would you ruin a perfectly valid critique with this kind of insulting, racist, classists nonsense?
I made him open the post.
The mind control is working.
Please mod me down.
Law enforcement will love this stuff.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
People still watch tv?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
They need to come up with adverts that are less annoying than poking myself in the eye with a darning needle
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
>> NBC doesn't trust what viewers say when asked for their opinion on shows.
They shouldn't trust people's expressed opinions. How many people have you heard say naive things like "I'm not influenced by advertising" or "I do my own research"? And yet, advertising works, particularly because advertisers know where prospects go to "research" and get their pitches in there.
This article should disabuse anyone of the notion that they are not influenced by advertising. They are studying brain physiology in order to sell you stuff! They are operating on a subconscious level that many people aren't even aware exists! We have little defense if our conscious mind doesn't even enter into the equation. And if you think these techniques are just used to make you want hamburgers, think again.
Advertising and other forms of subconscious manipulation are used to sell you wars, government policies and political candidates. People think their opinions are their own, but often they have just been selected from a menu presented to them by the media.
Yeah, advertising works. Millions if not billions of dollars have been spent to understand how you think, what motivates you, and how to influence that without your knowledge. Anyone who thinks they are not affected is foolish and ignorant.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
|NO. They should not show any ads at all. On the one side you have people who do not want advertising. On the other side you have companies that want to have adversiting 100% of the time if not more.
Saying that you agree with part of it is discussing the amount. For me that amount is 0. I do not want it on tv, on the streets, on my underwear. I do not want it.
I understand that it excists. I understand that Ebola exists as well. That does not mean I can agree with 1% people dying from it instead of 10% (or whatever the numbers are). I want that number to be 0. I want the number of ads to be 0.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
I want to think that amazon/netflix/hulu/crunchyroll actually have a much better idea of what people actually watch. As they get the stats directly. Instead of a bunch of nelson's. Why is survivor still on? Its definitely not because people want to watch it.
However there does seem to be a race to the bottom going on for tv programming If everything on is crap you just need the least crappy show to sell ads. So they don't try very hard anymore.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
And yet, advertising works, particularly because advertisers know where prospects go to "research" and get their pitches in there.
And that makes their 'advertising' work, exactly, how? I believe your "if A then B" (i.e. modus ponens) is crap.
When Jim Carrey did the Vagi-Clean skit in Me, Myself, & Irene. Right after that part it broke to a commercial for Vagisil.
Nielsen Holdings is also in negotiations to purchase neuroscience firm Voight and Kampff next year, and hopes to improve their ability to detect which programs and advertisements are being watched by human viewers and which are only being scanned by computers.
This is great news. I'd been concerned for some time that I want watching enough ads, and that those ads I did watch we're failing to translate into product purchases at a high enough rate.
I'm really glad that they're putting serious resources, effort and scientific brainpower into improving my ad consumption. To those dedicated scientists devoting their research to this matter - I salute you.
Remove artificial legal barriers to streaming, and all the mineable viewer information you want becomes available by just observing what we click on and how long we stay with each show and each episode. We are starting to see interactive features in ads, which means that recognition of this is seeping through even the skulls of studio execs.
As Yogi Berra said, you can observe a lot just by watching.
Advertising works, but not necessarily the way they plan. One ad did a great job convincing me to buy a remedy for indigestion. The only problem is, they were trying to sell car insurance!
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
You don't know that TUMS didn't give kickbacks to Allstate (or whatever the parties were)
Do whatever you want to your commercials, I never see them anyway. Thanks TiVo!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Young grasshopper, there is much I could teach you.
When effective marketing organizations lay out plans to get people to buy a product, they design around a concept called a "sales funnel" and map out the mental state of potential buyers in various states. These states include (at a high level) learning about whether or not they have a need, deciding they need a solution, deciding what solutions they are going to purchase, and deciding to pull the trigger on their preferred solution.
Marketing organizations set up interactions designed to nudge buyers down the funnel at all stages, including the stages I listed: "do I have a problem" (often helped along by planted news stories with statistics like 74% of all health care companies fell prey to whatever) and "what solutions are available for this" (often helped along by seeding if not outright buying off a "trusted" reviewer or analyst). Throw in a couple of advertisements that reinforce the exposure of this or that brand name (which is also backed up by psychology), and suddenly you're another sheep buying Oracle.
Are you keeping up now?
There's a car insurance ad I've been seeing a lot lately. Every time I see it, I want to buy a computer. And a hundred dollars worth of gum.
Ideology: A tool used primarily to avoid the bother of thinking.
When the subconscious is targeted, it's going to feel like manipulation. While not in favor of government regulations for things like this, it seems low-rent to mess with our heads... would imagine the targeting will be effective and us pawns will line up to eat sawdust more predictably. Joy. Win for humans Being. Bzzzzt.
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
Time shifting provides such relief. Tivo still sets the standard for something PEOPLE want.
Time for a new Political party in the US (or two!) One is off the rails Other cant pony up a leader.
My wife is a neuroscientist, and just recently she was saying she would like to tap the knowledge of movie/TV directors and others in the industry to help figure out how the brain works. The good ones have a sense of how to direct attention and eye movements to parts of a scene.
But oracle is the best! they store my data for me in the oracloud!
Wait, I thought they already did this? Any time I'm watching the Food channel with my wife, about half the commercials are for prescription drugs and the other half are for food related things. Sometimes they even do these cute little commercials that look like the TV shows but obviously focus in on their product.
Thinking Pure Leaf tea on the last part. Their commercials look like Chopped and the other competition style cooking shows.
Are you willing to pay lots of money for broadcast TV, or basic cable channels? Advertising is the only viable source of income for most media outlets. What you want isn't relevant if it's totally unrealistic.
Targeting advertisements at intelligent people wouldn't make sense. Intelligent people aren't the ones that buy stuff because an ad told them to.
You should the GGP's post's example perfectly. You're intelligent therefor you don't buy what the ads tell you. Heh... You should see the manipulation that goes on WITH YOU in something as simple as a grocery store. But no, not you... You're immune. I know... I know...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
>> NBC doesn't trust what viewers say when asked for their opinion on shows.
They shouldn't trust people's expressed opinions. How many people have you heard say naive things like "I'm not influenced by advertising" or "I do my own research"? And yet, advertising works, particularly because advertisers know where prospects go to "research" and get their pitches in there.
This article should disabuse anyone of the notion that they are not influenced by advertising. They are studying brain physiology in order to sell you stuff! They are operating on a subconscious level that many people aren't even aware exists! We have little defense if our conscious mind doesn't even enter into the equation. And if you think these techniques are just used to make you want hamburgers, think again.
Advertising and other forms of subconscious manipulation are used to sell you wars, government policies and political candidates. People think their opinions are their own, but often they have just been selected from a menu presented to them by the media.
Yeah, advertising works. Millions if not billions of dollars have been spent to understand how you think, what motivates you, and how to influence that without your knowledge. Anyone who thinks they are not affected is foolish and ignorant.
For hire.
Are you willing to pay lots of money for broadcast TV, or basic cable channels? Advertising is the only viable source of income for most media outlets. What you want isn't relevant if it's totally unrealistic.
This is an absolute lie. Movies and shows make millions on on-demand viewers, merchandising, etc. The truth is advertising is just an additional revenue stream.
While free speech is great and all, this kind of advertising probably should be made illegal. This in the same sense that it's supposedly illegal to advertise toy products for the show of the same children's show.
I think this might be crossing into the territory of subliminal advertising.
relating to things that influence your mind in a way that you do not notice
|NO. They should not show any ads at all. On the one side you have people who do not want advertising. On the other side you have companies that want to have adversiting 100% of the time if not more.
Saying that you agree with part of it is discussing the amount. For me that amount is 0. I do not want it on tv, on the streets, on my underwear. I do not want it.
I understand that it excists. I understand that Ebola exists as well. That does not mean I can agree with 1% people dying from it instead of 10% (or whatever the numbers are). I want that number to be 0. I want the number of ads to be 0.
Advertising is an inevitable part of consumer capitalism.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it