Why do some advertisements get shared more than others? Quantifying facial expressions to gain new insights

Daniel McDuff and Jonah Berger

Why do some advertisements get shared more than others? Using scalable automated facial coding algorithms, the authors quantified the facial expressions of thousands of individuals in response to hundreds of video advertisements.
McDuff and Berger

Management Slant

  • Not all emotions increase sharing, and the relationship between emotion and transmission is more complex than mere valence alone.
  • Arousal seems to drive the relationship between emotions and sharing so that high-arousal emotions increase sharing and low-arousal emotions decrease it.
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