Affectiva raises $12m to extend emotional insight technology

As part of the deal Horizons Ventures’ Frank Meehan will join Affectiva’s board of directors and KPCB partner Mary Meeker will join as a board observer.

Affectiva says it wll use the funds to further develop technologies that lead to emotional insights for advertisements, trailers, TV shows and movies and any other kind of online video. It also intends to offer consumer applications for interpreting and sharing emotional responses.

Its core product is Affdex, an automated facial coding platform that reads emotions from facial expressions using a webcam or mobile phone camera, providing data that can give insight into consumer response to brands and media.

“The ability to effectively measure real-time emotion while consumers are watching video has the potential to improve online engagement and satisfaction for users, in addition to creating opportunities for marketers to more effectively determine what consumers care most about,” Meeker said.

David Berman, chief executive officer at Affectiva, added: “Our goal is to make Affdex a globally ubiquitous tool that enables people to understand and share their emotional experiences online.”

Affectiva, an MIT Media Lab spin-off, previously raised $7.7m from WPP, Myrian Capital and the Peder Wallenberg Charitable Trust, represented by Lingfield AB.