• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, October 5, 2015

Emotional response is becoming the next significant measurement tool to target advertisements from search to social, display, video and email. In fact, the race to offer consumers a better experience hinges on emotions. Several startups, The Walt Disney Co., and Forrester Research separately recognize this trend.

Great customer experience brands deliver 24 positive experiences for every negative one compared to the average, 7:1, according to findings released Monday by Forrester Research. The trend toward creating a better customer experience demonstrates that brands need to measure emotional responses to content, rather than just impressions and clicks.

Emotions are communicated through search ads that consumers click on, movie titles queried, colors in images and videos they upload to Facebook and Instagram, as well as music downloaded from iTunes, and products bought. "Clicks don't measure engagement in an increasingly social world filled with content," says David Dundas, CEO at mobile advertising startup Decisive.

Measuring emotional response requires a new metric. Decisive uses artificial intelligence to analyze data in images and video to predict emotional responses in social platforms. Piloting the platform with several brands, Dundas plans to roll out the technology in the next few months, after presenting Wednesday at Disney Accelerator Demo Day in Burbank.

Disney Accelerator will showcase 10 startups presenting their businesses to the investment and entrepreneurial communities, and Disney executives. Each company participating in the program receives $20,000 in funding, and access to an additional $100,000 convertible debt note.

"We had our NetFlix moment," Dundas says, referring to a change in business model as a startup after realizing the importance of measuring emotional responses. 

EMOTIV, a bioinformatics company that uses electroencephalography (EEG) to track mental performance, monitor emotions, and control virtual and physical objects with thoughts, also made the top 10 in the Disney Accelerator program.

As wearable devices become more popular, marketers will have physiological information in which to target based on opt-in permissions.

Forrester's research shows that emotion -- how an experience makes a customer feel -- influences brand loyalty. The research found that brands offering a great consumer experience rarely allow customers to walk away angry, but even the best have room to improve on the emotional experience. Consumers are more sensitive to negative than positive experiences.

Ameriprise Financial, despite being one of the best to offer a positive consumer experience, still needs to work on emotional experience. "Its positive-to-negative CX ratio (14:1) was 12 points lower than industry leader USAA (26:1) and a whopping 40 points lower than overall leader Edward Jones (54:1)," per the study.