New Emotient Web Service Measures Audience Response Using On-Demand Facial Expression Analysis

SAN DIEGO, March 17, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Emotient, the leader in facial expression detection and emotion analytics software, today announced general availability of Emotient Analytics, the world's first on-demand web service for the analysis of facial expressions. The system analyzes videos of people as they experience advertising, media content, products and services. It delivers audience response metrics - such as customer attention, engagement and sentiment - as derived from facial evidence of emotional states. Consumer insights generated from this analysis can improve performance for advertisers, media/entertainment companies, retailers and consumer products companies.

Emotions Drive Spending But Are Hard to Measure

The emergence of behavioral economics and neuro-marketing has illuminated the critical role that emotions play in consumer decision-making. However, until now, measuring how a customer feels about a brand or experience has been left to post-hoc customer surveys and subjective interpretations of focus groups and interviews. These are prone to bias and inaccuracy.

Emotient Analytics solves this problem by analyzing videos of customers for spontaneous facial expressions that directly and reliably describe their emotional state. The quickest of these, called micro-expressions, occur spontaneously in as little as a single video frame, before the person can consciously mask them. The results of this analysis allow Emotient Analytics to measure attention, engagement, positive or negative sentiment and specific emotional states.

Numerous Applications for Audience Response Measurement

Emotient Analytics creates value for many different types of business customers:

• Brands and agencies can improve advertising and promotional performance by choosing executions that beat the baseline set by a known strong performer.
• Media and entertainment firms can improve program viewership and loyalty by assessing the emotional engagement of demographic segments to pilots, segments, movies or trailers.
• Sports franchises can improve in-venue advertising CPM with audience response readouts for different ad placements and seating sections.
• Consumer goods companies can select product formulations, packaging and design options based on the emotional state they induce.
• Retail brands can improve sales and retention by identifying customer service issues and evaluating merchandising effectiveness.
• Academic and commercial researchers can add facial expression and emotional response data to their studies.

"For the first time, companies can use an on-demand web service to measure their customers' true feelings - in the moment - and generate insights to improve their products, services and marketing," said Ken Denman, CEO of Emotient, "Uniquely, we built Emotient Analytics to excel in the real-world and to scale gracefully. It can handle the tough video conditions found outside of formal settings and still deliver the industry's best accuracy."

Scalable Cloud Delivery of a Proven Technology

While the Emotient Analytics service is new, its underlying technology has a long pedigree. Its facial expression measurement engine evolved from technology first used at the University of California, San Diego's Machine Perception Lab and then in Emotient's FACET software application. It delivers extremely high accuracy in real-world conditions, even those plagued by poor lighting, turned faces and consumer-grade cameras. Uniquely, it can also detect and analyze numerous faces within a single video frame. This power means customers are no longer restricted to lab or focus groups conditions and can gain insights by watching consumers engage in real-world experiences.

Placing this robust platform in the cloud gives it tremendous scale. Emotient can dynamically add processing power to meet demand spikes and accommodate long-term growth. Customers with large projects or short deadlines can be confident that they will receive actionable insights in a timely fashion. Emotient Analytics can handle high demand, whether it be from long videos capturing multiple faces at a retail store or thousands of short webcam clips from an online panel advertising test.

Price and Availability

Emotient Analytics is available immediately at analytics.emotion.com on a "freemium" basis. The first 120 minutes of video analyzed are free-of-charge with no credit card required. Beyond this limit a Premium account provides additional analysis at an affordable price, charged per minute of video processed. Enterprise plans are also available for volume customers; please contact [email protected] for more information.

Emotient Analytics can be accessed via the web or through a RESTful API. For an API key an Emotient Analytics account is required.

About Emotient: Automated Facial Expression Analysis

Emotient, Inc., is the leading authority in facial expression analysis. Emotient software translates facial expressions into actionable information that helps companies make better decisions based on audience response to media, products and experiences. Emotient facial expression technology is currently available through the Emotient Analytics web service or the Emotient API. Automated emotion measurement can generate insights that increase revenue across many industries including advertising, media and entertainment, consumer goods, retail, enterprise sales, healthcare, and education.

Emotient was founded by a team of six PhDs from the University of California, San Diego, who are the foremost experts in the application of machine learning, computer vision and cognitive science to facial behavioral analysis. Its proprietary, patented technology sets the industry standard for accuracy and real-time delivery of facial expression data and analysis.  Emotient was named a Gartner 2014 Cool Vendor.

For more information on Emotient, please visit www.emotient.com.

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SOURCE Emotient