Passive Measurement Sheds Light on Unconscious Insights

By Lauren Walton, Director, Data Science

Did you know that measurement doesn’t always require active participation? Yes, traditional survey methods involve asking people questions and logging their responses. But that’s not the only way we measure, and asking questions doesn’t always uncover everything there is to learn.

Passive measurement methods involve getting answers without asking questions directly. These methods attempt to reduce or eliminate measurement error from a person or an instrument being “measured.” Think of it this way: Traditional surveys measure attitudes and behaviors that reside in a person’s consciousness. People aren’t always aware of their underlying feelings or preferences, and passive measurement has the potential to measure these.

At Nielsen, we’re using passive measurement to improve our media research. Our goal is to make participating in a Nielsen measurement service or panel the best experience we can for those being measured. That said, we don’t view passive measurement as a replacement for asking questions about media consumption behaviors. Rather, passive measurement methods are complementary to traditional methods that ultimately become part of a larger data set that provides a more holistic measurement outcome. Understanding how participants engage with our materials helps ensure that our panelists continue to generate great insights for our clients.

Here are a few ways in which we’re using passive measurement at Nielsen.

The Eyes Have It

Eye tracking is a way to measure whether objects that attract the visual attention of people without asking them. It’s been used in market research for years to understand which products study participants are drawn to in an array of scenarios, ranging from retail store shelves to websites. If I ask you to tell me where you look first at this article, you might have difficulty telling me. But, if you had eye-tracking glasses on while reading this article, I would know the order you looked at this article and which areas you spent more time looking at.

At Nielsen, we’ve been using eye tracking for years as a way to understand how people engage with panelist-facing materials ranging from print materials to smartphone apps. Within survey design, we use eye tracking to study how respondents attend to questions, response options and images within the self-administered survey mode.

The real benefit of eye tracking is being able to see what your participant is seeing. Survey tools and other qualitative methods measure what participants can — or want to — tell you, but eye tracking allows researchers to pair gaze data with research participant verbalizations to gain a more robust understanding of experience. From a usability research perspective, we use the technology to understand if panelists are able to understand the directions we provide them that guide them on how to use the measurement technology provided.

Eye-Tracking Use Cases

Example 1. Using Multilingual UX Testing to Develop an Online Computer and Mobile Panel

We wanted to make participating in our Nielsen Computer and Mobile Panel a better experience. The Nielsen Computer and Mobile Panel is an opt-in convenience panel that uses a meter to measure what consumers do on their computers and mobile devices. We conducted iterative rounds of user experience testing in both English and Spanish for the U.S. market as part of our website development.

This is an aggregate heat map for Spanish language Hispanic participants. We see that the call to action button “Empice” or “Get Started” was not fixated on as much compared to the English language participants. The images in the English version use the model’s gaze to direct attention to “Get Started.” We were able to change the Spanish images to do the same after this testing.

Example 2. Paper Diary Eye Tracking

Back in 2012, the data science team sought to understand why some newly re-designed communications materials did not perform as well as previous materials. To understand why, the team conducted an eye tracking usability study and found that many participants failed to see the Nielsen logo in the bottom left portion of the materials. Once the logo was re-positioned, the materials were able to better engage with respondents because they could more quickly identify the Nielsen brand.

Partnering with Nielsen Neuro

Consumer neuroscience methodologies capture non-conscious, unbiased responses to stimuli (like advertising) in a way that doesn’t rely solely on what viewers are able to tell us. In order to leverage this type of research, Nielsen data scientists partner with Nielsen Neuro to use EEG (electroencephalography) and eye tracking to reveal how our target consumers engage with an array of recruitment materials, including recruitment ads on the internet.

EEG involves having study participants wear an EEG “cap” that is embedded with 32 medical grade electrodes, which capture electrical signals occurring between neurons in the brain. From this data, the Nielsen Neuro team derives three primary metrics, each of which help Nielsen’s data scientists to understand how to better engage current and prospective panelists.

The Nielsen Neuro team relies on three primary metrics when conducting its research, each of which help Nielsen’s data scientists better engage with current and prospective panelists:

• Emotional Motivation: The intensity and extent of being drawn to the experience emotionally (a measure of lean in)
• Memory Activation: The formation of connections — with new and past experiences (a measure of relevance)
• Attention Processing: Measures sustained focus and shifts in focus over time (a measure of cognitive effort

Example 3 Digital Recruitment Advertisement Testing for Nielsen Computer and Mobile Panel

To enlist prospective panelists to join our panel, we use online advertisements, and those ads have changed over the years.

To make sure our ads resonate with prospective panelists, we use Nielsen Neuro methods to examine responses to images, taglines and typefaces. Through our testing across English and Spanish advertisements, the team learned that messaging and imagery that emphasizes personal benefit and perspective resonates well with people. We wanted to look at what types of headline messages are most effective.

Across our advertisement study in English and Spanish, we saw that headlines that emphasize a personal benefit work well to engage viewers. “For me” messaging with clear reward or benefit language outperform those that are less “me-centric.” And imagery that closely matches a first-person perspective (e.g., hands on smartphone close up) also drives high engagement. The results from testing the Spanish ads really reinforced this idea: “It’s rewarding being me” resulted in significantly higher levels of EEG engagement than the alternative headline (“it’s rewarding being us”). EEG engagement combines measures of Emotion, Memory and Attention, with an emphasis on Emotion.

Word choice and positioning really matter and can drive large differences in non-conscious response to the creative. This can often be very difficult or near impossible to tease apart using more traditional research methods.

New Technologies Improve our Panels and Our Measurement

The use of emerging technology has broad implications across Nielsen. While we’re using artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve the ways in which we measure consumer behavior, we’re also interested in using them to improve the experiences of our panelists. Not only does this improve our panels, it improves our measurement — which is how our clients truly benefit.