“Biometric tools in a computational advertising context: An overview of use and application.”

Glenna L. Read, Holiday, S. J., Hayes, J., & Britt, B. C. (forthcoming). “Biometric tools in a computational advertising context: An overview of use and application.” Special issue: Computational Advertising Research Methodology. Journal of Advertising.

Abstract: Biometrics advertising research describes a variety of measures of consumers’ physiological responses to advertising messages that often use computational methods to make inferences about psychological processing of these messages. They can also be used to fill gaps in our understanding of consumer psychological processes left by traditional computational methods. In this article, we articulate what biometric resources are available to advertising researchers, what psychological processes these resources assess and how they do it, how they can be applied in advertising research, relative advantages and disadvantages compared to self-report measures, and how computational processes facilitate their use in advertising research. To frame their application, we organize our discussion of biometric application within a traditional advertising framework, the hierarchy of advertising effects within the AIDA model. We end our discussion by considering lab set-up, research design, and data collection considerations, as well as recommendations for advancing advertising research using biometric resources.