Kantar and Affectiva Renew Partnership

Kantar has renewed its partnership with US-based facial analysis tech firm Affectiva for another three years, providing the global group with technology for tracking attention and emotions, in light of 'accelerating demand for facial coding in advertising, media, and market research'.

Founded as a spin-off from the MIT Media Lab and acquired in 2021 by Swedish technology firm Smart Eye, Affectiva helps clients to understand consumer engagement and emotion via facial expressions, gestures and tone of voice, using standard webcams. The firm claims its Emotion AI technology is 'trusted by 90% of the world's largest advertisers', and a month ago it added another innovation, calibration-free eye tracking, which it says slashes setup time for eye tracking work and enhances user experience in MR.

Kantar first invested in a minority stake in the firm in July 2011, and the two have worked together ever since to develop new ways to understand emotions and reactions to content, including facial coding and emotion recognition - this work was recently recognized as part of the ARF Attention Validation Initiative. Recently, Affectiva's Emotion AI has been included in Kantar's LINK+ product for digital and storyboard testing, allowing for increased testing volumes, with enhanced insights into how consumers feel and react to content.

Graham Page (pictured), Global Managing Director of Media Analytics at Affectiva, says of the news: 'We are thrilled to renew this important partnership with Kantar and continue to push the boundaries of what's possible in Emotion AI. Our joint efforts have driven innovation and have allowed us to scale the use of Emotion AI across Kantar's global client base, delivering insights that make a real difference in how advertisers connect with their audiences'.

The partners are online at www.kantar.com and www.affectiva.com .