Targeted Audio Ads Based On… Human Emotion?

Imagine being able to target your advertising messages based on the parameters of a listener’s emotions during a particular song.

That’s precisely what Mixberry Media hopes to provide for brands and advertisers in choosing to partner with Moodagent. Moodagent, a company that has synced over 5 billion songs to create instant playlists based on moods and emotions, should appear familiar to users of Spotify, as it was one of the first apps to be integrated within the platform.

In essence, Moodagent is a service that combines digital signal processing and AI techniques to create music profiles that take into account characteristics such as mood, emotion, genre, style, instrument, vocals, orchestration, production, and beat / tempo. From these characteristics, playlists are created. Moodagent has an enormous database of music in the cloud, in which every track is scored on five attributes: Sensual, Tender, Happy, Angry, and Tempo.

Using the advertising capabilities of Mixberry Media’s audio ads technology, coupled with Moodagent’s knowledgebase of the emotional and musical aspects of songs, advertisers can now target their message to distinct emotional profiles.

“At Moodagent, we have the World’s most extensive collection of mood data, enabling us to precisely decode the exact mood of any given track”, said Peter Berg Steffensen, CEO at Moodagent. “Our knowledge of emotional analytics, user behavior and perception, combined with the ability to connect this data with specific products, provides us with the key to an unparalleled precision for targeting audio advertisement.”

Brands will be able to select a specific song to embody the essence of their message and, as a result, have their ads heard when the listener is enjoying other tracks with the same emotional data and characteristics – allowing advertisers to communicate the core value of their brand as they perceive it and deliver it to users when they’re in a similar mood or state of mind.

“The positive reception and retention of the advertiser’s message has a lot to do with the consumer mood”, said Andre Hawit, CEO at Mixberry Media. “Our ads are delivered real-time taking into consideration all known user conditions at the exact moment the ad is delivered. We believe our partnership with Moodagent will create huge opportunities for brands and advertisers to reach their target audience at optimum time.”

Will This Work?

It’s hard to say. The mood-based ads idea comes in response to one of the most prevailing issues in audio & video advertising – the annoyance / disruption factor.

How many times have you attempted to watch a video on YouTube, only to be forced to sit through an advertisement before you can consume your desired content? And after you did watch the ad (assuming you didn’t hit “Mute”, or just open up a new window for 30 seconds), how receptive were you to that message? Did you feel inclined to buy a new BMW just because they interrupted your access to a racing video? Can one ever really be in the mood to be advertised to?

Then again when it comes to music, the correlation might be more powerful, and more subliminal, than we think. The emotional effects of music on a human being have been repeatedly confirmed through science, and through the resulting “vulnerability” a listener is subject to through music, brands and advertisers would be provided an advantageous (and subconscious) platform for the receiving of their marketing message.

In today’s “attention economy”, perhaps this is merely a taste of things to come; as the methods in which marketers are entering our lives to find out specifically the areas that make us tick are becoming more and more sophisticated, and one would argue, much more effective. 

What do YOU think? Can the public become more receptive towards audio ads if the right music puts them in the mood first? Leave your comments below.

This post is by regular Hypebot contributor and independent music business professional & musician, Hisham Dahud (@HishamDahud)