News UK launches emotion-based data platform

NewsIQ UK will capture the preferences, opinions and emotions of News UK’s audiences so brands can target campaigns based on emotional and attitudinal states. It claims this will drive emotional loyalty and potentially increase advertising engagement by up to 45%.

The company commissioned research from London School of Economics’ Professor Paul Dolan. In an experiment with its readers, people who had read an emotionally arousing piece of content – whether positive or negative – and then interacted with a video advert were 45% more likely to view the whole advert than those who had been exposed to non-arousing emotional content.

Similarly, readers who had consumed content that they defined as ‘pleasurable’ and then interacted with the advert were 32% more likely to watch the complete video ad than those who had been exposed to non-pleasurable content.

The platform is also designed to help brands move their focus away from simple click metrics to more brand and attention focused measures – so they can optimise campaigns towards primary goals such as time spent with brand or total reach of target audience.

Ben Walmsley, digital commercial director, News UK, said: “NewsIQ UK builds upon the traditional approach to digital advertising by recognising that audiences are people, driven not just by who they are and what they do, but by what they think and feel.

“The sort of emotional loyalty that we believe this platform can help create is far beyond loyalty based on pricing or familiarity. True emotional loyalty is about creating a psychological connection between the consumer and the brand.”

Dolan added: “When you experience a strong emotion, your body prepares itself to react and it is this trigger that creates the connection between emotionally powerful content and enhanced advertising engagement.”