How ACN delivered performance analytics for brand marketing campaigns with Prolific and Gorilla
Applied Consumer Neuroscience (ACN) is a scientific consultancy. It helps companies get a better understanding of how customers feel about their products.
ACN’s team of neuroscientists and psychologists develops bespoke research programs, hosts corporate training workshops, and presents at live speaking engagements.
And for the last six years, they’ve used a powerful combination of Prolific and Gorilla to make their studies as easy, efficient, and cost-effective as possible.
The task
Finecast, the global leader in addressable TV, approached ACN with a task. They wanted to investigate addressable ads – that is, ads that are relevant to you on a geographic, demographic, or behavioral level.
More specifically, the client wanted to know why addressable TV works so well, and what goes on inside a viewer’s brain when they see an ad they can relate to.
They were also curious about how context affects a viewer’s response to addressable ads. For example, if you’re streaming a TV show you actively chose to watch, your enjoyment of the show could make you more open to the ads you’re shown – or you could be irritated by the interruption.
The challenge
Based at University College London, ACN is used to recruit students for studies.
But with this research, they were looking for a diverse group of people: those who liked cars, go on cruises, have a dog, or own a video-gaming console. For one of their studies, they wanted participants who met exactly two of these criteria.
And you won’t find many cruise-goers on a college campus. In fact, it’s rare you’ll find cruisegoers who game anywhere.
All these people needed to fit within a nationally representative demographic spread, with equal numbers of men and women, in specific percentiles between the ages of 18 and 34, 35 and 54, and 55 and 70.
Understandably, this was quite a big ask – and a tricky task.
The solution
Enter Prolific and Gorilla.
The ACN team used Prolific to source the carefully vetted and highly engaged participants they needed.
Then, they used Gorilla’s intuitive yet technically robust research platform to conduct their studies.
It was critical that ACN had visibility of what participants liked and disliked, in a way that wasn’t obvious to the people answering. So, they asked 1,300 of Prolific’s pool about their favorite free-time activities.
Embedded in that were four questions that covered the topics they were interested in: cars, cruises, canines, and consoles.
Because of the scale of Prolific’s platform, ACN was able to isolate 200 of these people and use their data. (Yes – including many who enjoy navigating real seas and virtual worlds.)
The studies
ACN used Gorilla to conduct a 40-minute online experiment with the 200 participants they sourced with Prolific. These people were shown TV programs with embedded ads – addressable and not.
They were then given various recognition tasks to see what they could remember from the ads, and how confidently. These tasks were pre-built into the Gorilla platform and included reaction-time tests and mouse-tracking.
The data they collected with Gorilla showed how the addressability of an ad affected what a participant could remember about it.
It also gave contextual insight, exploring whether the TV context (that is, choosing your own show or having it selected for you) influenced the addressability uplift.
One thing a lot of clients in this space don’t fully appreciate is the speed at which it’s possible to design and implement an online behavioral experiment – then reach out to and collect a sample of participants that may be wide, and might be niche, but is representative and fits your demographic. At scale.
With the likes of Prolific and Gorilla, you can collect and analyze that data, in a reasonable process, in a couple of weeks. In tight marketing and research development timeframes, that ability is phenomenal. And it’s something that didn’t exist before these online tools became available.
The results
Thanks to ACN’s research, Finecast was able to bolster its reputation as a trusted thought leader, backing its work with evidence from academic institutions.
Instead of taking the simple route and relying on previous research, the company commissioned its own – ensuring everything it does is as impactful and scientifically sound as possible.
The research showed how important it is to craft an ideal customer profile and insert specific people into ads for viewers to relate to.
What’s more, it helped find the point where people engage with personalized ads best, without it becoming intrusive or irksome.
Above all, it confirms the fact that psychology drives marketing, and that you can demonstrate effective marketing practices work with modern psychological research methods. Using the right tools and approach, marketing teams can quickly test out new ideas at scale, with ease.
