How couch potatoes watch TV could hold clues for advertisers

At Boston’s Innerscope Research, researchers routinely outfit television watchers in a T-shirt-and-vest combination that measures perspiration, breathing, movement, and heart rate. On top of that, they may also monitor how different viewers’ eyes move as ads and programming roll.

The whole process is part of a burgeoning movement to determine whether the active emotional responses of what once were believed to be slack-jawed couch potatoes can help some of the nation’s biggest marketers and media outlets figure out whether commercials have an impact.

“The whole issue of whether this is research that marketers and advertisers can use in a prudent and productive way has yet to be determined,’’ said Glenn C. Kelley, an associate professor of marketing at Babson College. “I think it’s still way too early in the process.’’

For decades, TV networks and the companies that advertise on them have relied primarily on measures that determine how many people saw a specific program. Nielsen ratings continue to be important, with everyone hoping the shows they support reach millions of viewers. Yet the Web and mobile devices are drawing audiences away from the boob-tube - and offering better data not only about how many consumers watch, but how many respond and click. The result? Calls for new studies that tell not how big an audience was, but rather how much of that audience was really interested in what it saw.

“There has been a plateau in the kinds of data you can get out of traditional measures,’’ said Dr. Carl Marci, Innerscope’s chief executive and cofounder. “The world has become more cluttered, and there’s more competition for people’s attention, so things have to break through more. When you have traditional measures that aren’t sensitive enough to the kinds of emotional responses that drive behavior, you end up putting out a lot of very average’’ creative product that does not stand out.

Innerscope has worked with NBC Universal to determine whether people who fast-forward past commercials with a digital video recorder can comprehend any of the commercial messages in the blur they see on screen. (The study generally found that viewers do have some comprehension of the ads they see while fast forwarding.) The company has also partnered with News Corp’s Fox network to see whether ads that ran during “Fringe,’’ a science fiction drama that intentionally aired with significantly fewer commercials and shorter ad breaks last season, were more engaging. Cable’s National Geographic Channel used Innerscope recently to try to figure out exactly what viewers looked at on the TV screen while commercials and show promos ran.

Even so, efforts to reinforce so-called biometric measurements have drawn some skepticism from the media and ad industries; even those executives working with the stuff urge caution.

“These are early days,’’ said Duane Varan, executive director of the Interactive Television Research Institute, a research consortium based at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia. He is also overseeing a new Austin, Texas-based advertising research facility backed by Walt Disney Co. “The human body is not created to tell us about ads. The human body is doing other things at the same time’’ while a person is watching TV, he added, “and it’s very easy to get overexcited’’ and draw broad conclusions.

That is not stopping Disney and others from using such research along with more traditional measures.

In one recent study, Disney wanted to determine whether ESPN’s “ticker’’ that runs at the bottom of the TV screen had any impact on the performance of ads when it continued playing into commercial breaks. While sports fans liked the ticker, it wasn’t quite clear whether the scrolling news and graphics could distract viewers from ad messages.

Study participants were exposed to an episode of “SportsCenter,’’ with half seeing the ticker continue during ad breaks and half exposed to ad breaks without it. Each day of the study, viewers saw 30 minutes to 45 minutes of “SportsCenter’’ with four ad breaks. Researchers used “eye tracking,’’ or monitoring where viewers’ eyes focused on the screen in front of them, and also recorded viewing sessions so they could track percentages of ads viewed and frequency of looking at the episodes. The study revealed that about 12.6 percent of so-called eye time was spent looking at the ticker.

Since that sports scroll is a way to keep viewers from changing channels or fast-forwarding during ad breaks, the fact that it didn’t disrupt the ability to recall an ad or change any attitude toward any of the advertisers was taken as a sign of success.

Greater sophistication is on the way.

Varan expects technology will allow researchers to record how viewers’ facial muscles move - even if the edges of one’s lips start to curl - while they watch TV, then attempt to translate those facial movements into what emotions the viewer may be feeling. Using such techniques more seriously is probably a year or two away, he estimated.

Demand seems heavier, too. Innerscope’s Marci said the company has been adding two or three new clients a month, a sign that more people are taking the measurement of emotions more seriously.

Even so, acceptance may not come easily. This type of research “has got grounding,’’ said Stephen Hahn-Griffiths, chief strategy officer at Boston’s Mullen agency, but its backers will have to prove viewer response leads to something more meaningful. “You’re getting a knee-jerk response, and it might be a good response or a bad response, but how do you tie it to a behavior?’’ asked Hahn-Griffiths - making a purchase, talking to a friend about an ad, or going online to get more information.

Technological advances could increase interest in such studies. As TV grows more complex, viewers will soon have more ability to interact with their favorite flat-screen as programmers and advertisers ask them to push a button on the remote to get more information or text a message via mobile phone. Suddenly, the goal isn’t just about getting a message in front of millions of people, but getting as many people as possible to take the next step and react.

Advertisers and media outlets want to know “where you can get data on what people are thinking and feeling,’’ said Brad Dancer, senior vice president-research and digital media at National Geographic Channel. “It’s hard to get. You can’t get it by asking,’’ because people often shy away from giving honest answers about what they feel internally.

Should the researchers be able to prove a commercial that provokes a rapid heartbeat, sweating, and movement in all the right facial muscles also leads to increased sales, they will likely have a hit on their hands. Until then, well, the testing goes on.

“It’s a sexy topic. It’s kind of interesting and it’s kind of a new spin on research,’’ said Kelley, the Babson College professor. “At the same time,’’ he asked, “where’s the beef?’’ That line, from a famous Wendy’s ad that drew intense response in 1984, could be just the sort of hook the ad scientists hope to discover in months to come.

Brian Steinberg is the television editor of Advertising Age.