Chief executive officer Tapat Yuvaboon said Idea 360’s face-reading tool – Emotion Reader – was developed from MIT Media Lab’s work in the US.

The company providing the tool to Idea 360 is a rival of Emotien, a start-up company recently bought by Apple.

“It’s now the trend to find |consumers’ unconscious minds rather than to use a straight-|forward technique such as a |questionnaire to conduct market research, in particular among global companies that have established presences in the Thai market” he said.

Emotion Reader software can be used to appraise whether content in advertisements or TV programmes will be successful, to rate characters in a programme, analyse particular scenes, or to predict whether the content can go viral, he explained.

Using a normal webcam of a computer or mobile phone, the software detects “smile curves” of the audience and analyses their emotions changing with the scenes or particular characters.

Tapat said the company providing the tool to Idea 360 had collected the largest database, of around 3 million faces, and claimed an accuracy rate of 95 per cent.

Among Idea 360’s primary target customers for the new tool are advertising agencies, media companies, and fast-moving goods companies.

“Our initial target is media |firms that have to produce a lot |of content,” the CEO said, adding, “The tool can also be used for |testing advertisements, pre- and post- their launches. It can also |predict sales revenue of the products.”

The Emotion Reader will complement other immersive research tools, including in-depth interviews that can be conducted to validate the results.

Among the companies that have used this emotion-reading software are Unilever and CBS, he said.

Meanwhile, Tapat said Idea 360 had bucked the overall Thai economic trend, booking overall business growth of 30 per cent last year.

“When the economy is not good, we are usually doing well since companies want to increase their sales,” he said.