Neuroscience study reveals the impact of digital out-of-home advertising on consumers

A recent study published by Neuro-Insight UK and Ocean Outdoor has found that large format digital out-of-home advertising drives ‘strong’ emotional responses that are linked to purchase intent.

The Science Behind the Art of Outdoor – which measured 24 outdoor sites around west London – used neuroscience to quantify the impact of large format outdoor advertising in an urban setting, focusing on the correlation between brain responses and purchase behaviour.

A sample of 115 people were fitted with headsets that captured second by second brain activity as they watched a filmed journey featuring the chosen outdoor sites, ultimately collecting approximately 1.8 billion data points which were then analysed.

“In the last 20 years, there have been huge advances in the understanding of basic brain function; we now know that the brain is highly specialised, and by plotting which parts of the brain are active in response to a given piece of communication, we can get insight into what people are thinking and feeling about that communication,” said Heather Andrew, a founder of Neuro-Insight UK.

“Through measuring the brain response of participants on a second by second basis, it became clear that unique large format and spectacular poster sites were eliciting a much stronger emotional response than standard sites.”

Andrew added that the emotional response tells the brain that something important is happening, and therefore primes the brain to remember it. This level of memory encoding is hugely important, she says, because it correlates with decision making and purchase intent, which demonstrates the ‘effectiveness’ of outdoor sites.

Ocean Outdoor’s CEO Time Bleakley said: “Instinctively we have always known that premium digital outdoor advertising captures attention. Now we can replace instinct with research that scientifically quantifies brain response and provides evidence of its positive long term impact on customer behaviour.”