Binaural Beats, Music Mood and Advertising
A scientific research project on how self selected background music impacts users short-term memory and task performance using EEG brain signals
Background
As part of my dissertation and the collaboration with Lamar University Marketing team, and College of Engineering, we have conducted a research to quantitatively analyze the effect of background music and binaural beats in advertising settings using brain signals and Eye tracking.
Research Goals
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Identifying how music mood impacts viewers focus and evolution of the ad
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Evaluating engagement of users under different background music conditions
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Researching possible impacts of Binaural Beats in an advertising setting (Has never been done before)
Research Questions
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Does music mood impact the viewers engagement and evaluation of the commercial?
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What background music condition improves the viewers focus and attention?
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Does the new phenomenon Binaural Beats have any impact on the viewers perception of the ad?
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Does binaural beats impact viewers focus in any way?
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To deliver answers to these questions, we conducted a scientific research
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Brain Signals using EEG
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Pupil dilation using Eye Tracking
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Questionnaire and Surveys
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84 Participants
My Role
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Planning
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Recruitting
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Sound design/editing
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Conducting Study
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Analysis
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Presentation
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RESEARCH PROCESS
What more can we know about the impact of music in advertising?
Literature Review
Effect of music in advertising is a vastly researched topic by many psychologists and marketing specials in the past. In fact, the impact of music is well accepted that from the 1980s until 2010, use of music in advertisements doubled in ratio. Currently %86 of advertisements consist of some sort of music. So when it's this significant, music must be doing something in favor of the success of advertising. And much research proves this with various approaches. However, is there still more research to do on this topic?
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In this research, I have reviewed over 60 scientific journals from 1936 until today, with a deep look into every aspect of music psychology and how it is analyzed in a quantitative way in various retail and advertising settings.
Here with this deep dive, the gap in the past literature is identified.
Highlights of the past research and their limitations;
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Most studies ignored mood congruency when they studied the effect of music mood
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Literature surrounding music mood has various approaches and there is still lack of consistent findings
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Effect of music mood with arousal still has very limited research, most of them are in retail setting or study is based around a product/brand perception.
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To the best of our knowledge no advertising study has been conducted in an academic setting.
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Past literature has no implications or research of binaural beats in advertising alongside music mood.
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Past literature has very limited research using biometrics measures with EEG and eye tracking.
Deciding on Independent Variables and Experiment Conditions
When the music is so subjective, how can we justify music mood and mood congruency in a scientific way?
Most past research studying the impact of music mood on advertising evaluation, neglected one of the most important factors; mood congruency.
Since our advertisement is about an academic program, it would not be very logical to use sad music as one of our conditions.
To justify our music mood, and create different experiment conditions, valence and arousal 2 dimensional emotion scale is adopted.
Previous literature states that
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Faster tempos (110+ bpm) lead to higher arousal
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Medium tempo (80 to 110) leads to lower arousal
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Slow tempos (60 bpm) leads to very low arousal levels
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Major modes and harmonies lead to positive valence and positive feelings whereas minor modes and harmonies lead to negative valence and negative feelings
Based on these findings in the past research, songs have been selected by using their tempo values, modality and the labeled emotion from the marketing department`s database
It would be illogical to use music with negative valence since this is an advertising about academic program with a positive tone, we are only focusing on the positive right side of the scale with 3 different arousal levels.
Exciting Music = Tempo: 110. Major Modality. Labeled as exciting, motivating, upbeat music.
Pleasing Music = Tempo: 80. Major Modality. Labeled as peaceful, positive pleasing music.
Calming Music = Tempo: 60 BPM. Major Modality. Labeled as meditation, relaxing and calming music.
Binaural Beats
In addition to our unique approach with music mood based on valence and arousal, this study also looked beyond that with the use of a newly introduced biocentric technique; binaural beats.
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Past literature showed some significant impacts of Binaural beats on cognition
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Binaural beats have became a very popular meditation, relaxation and sleeping tool in recent years
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It has been shown that some individuals use these sonic stimulations to increase focus and memory while working
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Previous scientific research has demonstrated 40 Hz binaural beats improving focus and attention of individuals.
Independent Variables
Music Mood
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Exciting Music: High Arousal - Positive Valance
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Pleasing Positive Music: Neutral Arousal - Positive Valance
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Calm Relaxing Music: Low Arousal - Positive Valance
Binaural Beats
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40 Hz Binaural Beat Gamma range added into each music mood condition (300 Hz on Left ear, 340 Hz on right ear)
Control Group Design for A/B testing
Since this is an advertising study, it would not be logical for individuals to see the same video with different music conditions, so I have created 6 control and focus groups.
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6 different versions of the advertising are created based on music mood and binaural beats to test in a lab setting. Shown in the table below.
Dependent Variables
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Advertising Likability
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Information Retainability
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Pupil Size and Pupil Dilations
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Brain Signals
Advertising Likability
To measure and evaluate the advertising evaluation and likability, Likert scale type of questionnaire is developed​
Information Retainability
To measure and evaluate the participants attention, and how much information they were able to retain from the commercial, information retainability, quiz like questionnaire is developed. Questions were targeting some of the visual and verbal clues presented in the video.
Pupil Sizes, Pupil Dilation and Brain Signals (EEG)
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(Brain signals acquired using EEG from 14 electrodes; F6, F5, Fz, Cz, Pz, P5, P6, O1, O2 sites)
Experiment Design
3 by 2 experiment design is created to address the research question successfully.
Experiment Process
Participants Recruitment
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Engineering undergraduate students who are interested in pursuing masters degree
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Professionals already working but considering going back to school for graduate programs to advance further
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Total of 84 participants, 14 for each control group.
Advertising
Research Plan Summary
RESULTS
Statistical Analysis
Some of the statistical analysis I conducted including but not limited to following methods;
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Average scores, mean values
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The standard deviation
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The %95 Confidence Interval
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Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) statistical test
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T-Tests to evaluate the mean values
Online Engagement
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For this section, data is still being gathered targeting high sample size with high engagement numbers to conduct better statistical analysis
Advertising Likebility
TITLE OF THE CALLOUT BLOCK
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Statistical analysis showed no significant effect on viewers ad evaluation
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However, there is a clear trend where music with binaural beats caused viewers to report higher ad evaluation.
Information Retainability
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Statistical analysis showed no significant difference when it comes to amount of information viewers retained.
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Viewers retained the most information from the advertising video with calming music with binaural beats
Brain Signals (EEG)
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Music with binaural beats, especially the calming music with binaural beats had a significant impact on frontal alpha asymmetry. (p = 0.038)
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Graph below shows the asymmetrical responses of alpha waves in frontal lobe mainly. The left activation shown in calming music with BB is the biggest indication of higher viewer engagement.
Eye Tracking (Pupil sizes)
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Graph below shows the average pupil dilation of viewers for each condition per milliseconds.
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Statistical analysis showed no significance between conditions however the pleasing music with binaural beats and calming music with binaural beats had the largest average pupil dilation values per second
Summary
Even though advertising likability and information retainability results were not significant, the pattern was there.
Especially this pattern was supported by alpha frontal asymmetry indicating that the binaural beats helped viewers to stay more engaged significantly.
In addition to brain signals, pupil dilation values also supported the trend even though the difference was not significant.
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Due to the nature of this experiment, there had to be control and focus groups in this research. With more sample size, some of these patterns can lead to more significant findings in the next phase of this research.
Research
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Thesis took a very detailed look into how music mood and binaural beats impact the advertising performance.
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Conducted a very detailed literature review regarding how music mood and binaural beats can be studied quantitively and qualitatively.
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Overall, neuromarketing research is conducted on the impact of music mood and binaural beats on academic advertising
Impact
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Research provided a valuable commercial for the engineering management program.
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Based on our knowledge it`s the only research that incorporated binaural beats alongside of music in an advertising setting.
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Contributed to the limited literature by studying the impact of music mood in advertising, encompassing both valence and arousal, as well as considering the mood congruency
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Biometric measures
Takeaways
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This research provided a great experience as far as using focus and control groups.
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Practicing frame by frame pupil and eye gazing was a very valuable application.
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Survey and questionnaire design in this research was highly valuable to provide valuable qualitative feedback
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EEG analysis in a neuromarketing context