Affectiva gets $5.7M to measure facial expressions

The company's facial expression recognition technology measures a viewer's response to a video ad

Have you ever found yourself so baffled by what people seem to find funny or entertaining (the “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies, perhaps?  The Progressive Insurance commercials?  Jim Carrey?) that you wish you had a machine to explain it to you?  As it turns out, someone already came up with that idea.  Affectiva, a company that spun off of the MIT Media Lab, has developed technology that can analyze consumers’ facial expressions as they watch a video to determine how engaged they are and whether they like the video.  And the company announced Tuesday that it has raised $5.7 million in a Series B round of funding led by WPP’s consumer insight division, Kantar, and Myrian Capital.

Founded in 2009, the company originally got its start as a collaborative effort among MIT researchers to help autistic children develop the abilities to read the facial expressions of others.  Affectiva also developed a wearable biosensor that measures skin conductance and stress levels so that adults who have difficulty gauging an autistic child’s current stress state from their facial expressions (or lackthereof) can read their bodily stress levels using the biosensor.

Since then, the company’s aim has shifted and the technology is now being targeted towards commercial businesses uses—specifically for gauging consumer responses to video ads.  Using a webcam, the Affdex facial expression recognition technology measures the different points on a viewer’s face to analyze emotional responses to an ad, such as smiling (liking the ad), lowering the brows (disliking the ad), and other facial nuances that indicate engagement with the video. See it in action here. 

And according to the company, the technology is remarkably accurate—approximately 98% for gauging whether a person likes an ad, and about 90% for measuring negative responses to an ad.  The new capital from this round will be used in part to commercialize the technology and develop a Web self-service version.  Currently, market research organizations like Kantar work directly with Affectiva to set up an external or internal Web page where they can upload the videos that they want viewers to watch.  From there, the viewer opts in, his/her webcam switches on, and the software goes to work measuring facial expressions and automatically gauging emotional responses.

Affectiva’s biosensor—known as the Q Sensor—is still in demand for autism research and therapy, as well as from market researchers, and as a company spokesperson explained: “If enough of the latter buy them, that will bring down the cost to the former.”

In addition to the new funding, WPP and Myrian Capital will join Affectiva's board of directors.