Lightspeed launched the emotion analytics capability in the Asia Pacific region last year and is now rolling it out to Europe and the Americas too.

Using participants’ webcams to capture their facial expressions while they view advertisements, Affectiva’s technology gives researchers the ability to quantify emotion from more than 5.5 million Lightspeed panellists who have opted in to have their emotions measured.

Affectiva’s system measures the movement of all 43 facial muscles to identify 20 facial expressions, which it uses to quantify seven emotions, including the intensity of the emotion and whether it is positive or negative. It allows researchers to evaluate moment-by-moment emotional reaction to ads by age and gender, all benchmarked against norms built on the analysis of more than 24,000 ads.

"This collaboration is indicative of our commitment to deliver the next generation of market research solutions that leverage a combination of attitudinal and behavioural data," said Edan Portaro, who leads on strategic alliances and mobile strategy at Lightspeed.

Gabi Zijderveld, chief marketing officer at Affectiva, said: "Marketers are going beyond surveys to connect with today’s consumers". The introduction of facial coding to Lightspeed’s panel "adds a significant new dimension to market research and consumer behavior analysis," she said.

Affectiva was set up in 2009 by Rana El Kaliouby, who developed the original technology for her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.