Ever wondered why people are willing to sit through ad after ad, even though they’re not ready to do the most essential things for their friends sometimes? It all comes down to how advertisers get your brain to react to their marketing messages.
It takes the unconscious mind just a few milliseconds to react to a piece of advertising — far faster than the conscious brain. It turns out that this issue is critical. It means that advertising creates a Pavlovian response. People don’t choose how to consume advertising; it just happens to them. Then they’re left with the distinct sense that they like one brand and dislike another — even though they can’t explain why if you ask them.
Therefore, advertising is all about creating an emotional response that precedes the “rational” faculties of your brain. Companies rarely talk objectively about the benefits of their products. Instead, they do something evocative, designed to pull on your heartstrings. Make no mistake: this is deliberate.
So what happens to your brain on advertising? Let’s delve into some of the science.
Emotional Reactions Are Almost Instantaneous
It takes the conscious mind a couple of seconds to register and interpret emotion. But it can take the unconscious mind as little as 13 ms to experience it. Thus, people who think they can block out advertising are sadly mistaken. The moment you so much as look at an advert, you’re essentially subjected to its charms — and what’s why it can be so powerful.
According to a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research, the ventral striatum represents the “sweet spot” of advertising. Advertisers want to stimulate those parts of your brain that are effective for them to generate the right degree to have an impact. If you can get that “reward center” going, advertisers stand a better chance of selling.
Engagement Is A Major Challenge
The average person sees around 3,000 adverts per day. That’s a lot of marketing material — and it would take hours and hours to consider it all consciously.
Getting people to actively engage with advertising and make decisions about it is a challenge. For instance, if you make a QR code, you need to get people to scan it. Advertisers have to think deeply about this. What would actually work?
Usually, the optimal strategy involves creating an emotional connection. To many advertisers, this is identical to engagement. They’re the same thing. If you can make somebody feel something, you’ve nearly done your job.
Creative Ad Tailoring
Everyone, though, is a little different. We all have emotional responses to different stimuli — it’s the way we’re made. Creative ad tailoring is all about adjusting the type of programmatic ads that people see, depending on their personalities
Advertisers already have data on the location, platform, time, and weather affecting the users in digital environments. So they can adapt their ads according to the broader environment and hopefully encourage a sale.
The trick here is to use contextual information to stimulate both your brain’s left and right sides. According to research, this increases both engagements, memory recall, and delight.
