Imagine how much an advertiser would pay for knowing what their advert did to viewers heart rates.
‘Dystopian’ is exactly the right word.
‘Dystopian’ is exactly the right word.
It might be a rhetorical question but do someone in the industry has any idea? It has some value, like most metrics but my suspicion is that it is relatively low.
It is a proxy for a secondary metric. The reason people put up ads is to drive up sales, so that's the important metric. A secondary metric is engagement it can be directly measured by click through, time watching, etc... And then you have heart rate, which may indicate an emotional response, but it can be anything else. For example I am pretty sure that on average the heart rate goes up when TV ads show, but it may just be because of the physical effort of standing up and walking to the bathroom. Which is probably more significant than the emotional response caused by ads most people are desensitized about.
It could be useful for A/B testing, with the heart rate metric being the average value of your overall data.
I wonder if you could also compare WHEN the heart rate increases with the timing of the ad - for example if your ad ends with a funny punchline and your logo, seeing the heart rate spike is a good sign people are laughing at it.