BBC Reveals Plans for Facial Tracking

In the UK, broadcaster the BBC has partnered with facial tracking specialist CrowdEmotion to monitor the 'conscious and unconscious' emotional reactions of viewers to TV programmes.

CrowdEmotion's technology uses smart sensors and webcams to record individuals' expressions and actions, and uncover which emotions drive choices and behaviour. Facial movements are recorded on a second-by-second basis, with the reactions divided into six categories: sadness, puzzlement, happiness, fear, rejection and surprise.

According to the Independent newspaper, the BBC plans to use this technology to reveal viewers' subconscious 'emotional attachment' to programmes. A pilot carried out last year measured the responses of 5,000 people to marketing campaigns run on the BBC.com web site, to find out if audiences would respond more positively to content which was clearly from a commercial brand. The study showed that clearly labelled content increased 'explicit' feelings of positivity towards the brand by 77%, with a 14% in 'subconscious positivity' when the ad was marked as sponsored content.

In a statement, the BBC said the technology had enabled it to find out the emotional response of each person and 'how they truly felt' about the content they were viewing, rather than relying on traditional analytics such as dwell time and page views.

Web sites: www.bbc.co.uk and www.crowdemotion.co.uk .