Social and commercial advertising: a neuromarketing study

This study aims to investigate neurophysiological activation during different types of multimedial artefact fruition. In particular we want to verify cortical activation during the vision of both social issues and commercial advertising videos. 10 videos of 30 seconds of duration are presented to a sample of 15 healthy subjects. Advertising videos are selected identifying 5 categories comparable by a commercial or pro-social point of view, and they were: money, health, technology, nutrition and clothing. During videos vision, cortical and physiological activation are recorded by electroencephalography (EEG) and biofeedback. EEG data show a tendency in the presence of Alpha in central areas for social advertising in comparison with commercial advertising and in general there is more activation in the right hemisphere considering that the value of alpha is higher in the left hemisphere, especially in the categories health, money and clothes. This right activation suggest that health, money and clothes are not prerceived as positive. These findings are supported by the results of the semantic differential in which the commercial advertising was considered less accessible, and specially the category money, was considered less desirable, prestigious and new. Also the presence of theta is related with emotions and considering that was higher in frontal area, it is related with high level mental functions such as motivation, control of behavior, emotions and acts in the ethical and moral sense. It is possible to suppose that social advertising (that has higher presence of theta in frontal areas) brings the activation of brain areas related with altruistic behavior. This is also supported by the results of semantic differential in which social advertising was considered more useful. The autonomic indices PVA (Pulse Volume Amplitude) reports a higher activation during social advertising, that suggests that this type of advertising provokes a greater emotional response (according to theta band levels in social advertising). Pulsations increase in the category health and clothes for social advertising, while they increase in the category food and technology during commercial advertising. It is possible that social advertising is the type of advertising that most activate emotional responses, for that reason, it is possible to conclude that advertising with social content activates brain areas related with altruist attitude and areas related to emotions