Archive for November, 2010

Your Brain on Ads

Sunday, November 14th, 2010

Today's New York Times article Making Ads That Whisper to the Brain gives a pretty balanced view of using EEG monitoring for doing market research -- "Neuromarketing."

This is not a mind reader,... We can only measure whether you are paying attention.

I write frequently on EEG related technologies, and often sceptically about some of its applications. The term "pop neurology" seems to apply here, especially when it comes to the ability for this technology to correlate to purchasing behavior. The establishment of NeuroStandards will only ensure that everyone is fooling themselves the same way.

Also, "brain-whispering" makes no sense. Most ads I see are loud and intellectually insulting (TV) or are visually annoying (Web) -- it's more like brain-shouting.

Here's a Today show segment on this: Inside the brain of a shopper.