Measuring the effectiveness of brand integrations in television programming can be challenging with traditional surveys that ask viewers to recall whether they saw a product placement. Research technology platform MediaScience aims to reduce possible biases in those study results by comparing how people respond to different versions of the same programming – one with the product placement and one without.

“The results have taught us that there is a new paradigm around how integrations work on television,” Duane Varan, chief executive of MediaScience, said in this interview with Beet.TV.

Product placements are especially effective at priming viewers to experience the same brand in an adjacent commercial break, he said. That means an ad for a home improvement retailer, as an example, can be more effective when its brand appears on a truck within a do-it-yourself show.

“In this day when those ad avails are so much more precious, it becomes so much more important that we capitalize on that as best we can, which is exactly what image integration does,” Varan said.

MediaScience’s methods include monitoring the heart rates of test subjects to measure how they engage with ads, or analyzing their facial gestures to determine whether a commercial was humorous. Engaged viewers tend to recall ads better and more favorably, while also showing higher purchase intent, he said.

His company works with native advertising technology company TripleLift to help brands gauge the effectiveness of brand integrations. TripleLift’s technology enables customized product placements within TV programming.

“We’ve had a great partnership with TripleLift as well helping to test different scenarios to try to understand the circumstances under which integrations are more or less effective,” Varan said. “Every brand needs to discover the best-in-class measures delivering against those specific communication objectives.”

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