As our lives become progressively saturated with multimedia content, marketers and researchers see a great need in measuring the impact of their audio and video on their audience.
The problem is that people’s feelings tend to fluctuate throughout even a short piece of media, which means asking a simple, “How did that video make you feel?” question nearly always oversimplifies your respondents’ emotions.
To help address these issues, we’re rolling out two new question types that allow you to gather continuous feedback on your media: Audio Sentiment and Video sentiment.
In this post we’ll walk you through the basics of getting started with these survey questions and suggest some instances when they can help you collect exciting new data points.
Collecting Continuous Feedback on Audio and Video Clips
The Audio and Video Sentiment questions includes three main components:
- A media player with a visualization of the data associated with the audio or video file
- An open text field to collect feedback from the listener (optional)
- A slider to measure sentiment
As the file plays, the listener can move the slider to record their response. Each interaction with the slider will be recorded during playback and will be time-stamped for easy reporting later on.
If you choose to enable it, the listener also has the option to provide their own comments in a text box. (You can find this option under the Layout tab when setting up an Audio or Video Sentiment question.)
Like slider interactions, comments will be time-stamped so you know exactly what prompted that reaction. To avoid listeners missing anything while typing a comment, the audio or video file will automatically pause anytime there’s a click on the comment box.
You’ll see in the example above that we’ve labeled the ends of the slider scale “Happy” and “Sad,” but you have the option to customize these labels to reflect the particular sentiment you’re trying to gauge.
These question types support multiple sliders, but we recommend using these sparingly. Asking respondents to listen to audio or watch video and react via several sliders simultaneously may be overwhelming to some survey takers.
Mobile Interactions for Audio and Video Sentiment
We know that many respondents will be answering these questions via mobile devices, so they’ve been optimized to work seamlessly on practically any device.
On both desktop and mobile, respondents will see an introductory gif that explains how to interact with the question. They can click or tap anywhere on the screen to close the gif and see the audio or video.
While the file plays, their sentiment changes will show in a real-time reaction line below the player.
The one design consideration to keep in mind when creating these questions is that your slider labels – Sad and Happy in our example – need to be short enough to display well on smaller screens. We always recommend testing your surveys on multiple devices before you distribute them to respondents, just to be sure.
Measuring Audience Response to Your Video or Audio
In our Standard Report, both of these questions report as a Spline Chart in conjunction with the audio or video player.
This chart represents the average sentiment across all respondents (y-axis) for each second of the audio or video (x-axis).
Note that the y-axis values range from -10 (when the slider is moved all the way to the left) to 10 (when the slider is moved all the way to the right).
Clicking on any section of the Spline Chart will allow you to see the corresponding location in the audio or video. You can play the audio or video within the report too, and you’ll see the audio or video track across the chart via a vertical green line.
If you chose to allow comments on your Video or Audio Sentiment question, any comments that your respondents provide will be available as part of the report element. Each comment will be time-stamped based on the point in the audio when the comment was submitted.
Innovative Question Types for Groundbreaking Data
Whether you’re after feedback on a new commercial or wondering how your latest product explanation video will do, these new question types should help you get the data you need. You can also test different versions of similar content to find the best fit for your specific audience.
If you need a more detailed walkthrough on how to set them up, how they report, or any other technical details, you can check out our documentation:
Andrea Fryrear is the chief content officer for Fox Content, where she uses agile content marketing principles to drive content strategy and implementation for her clients. She also writes for and edits The Agile Marketer, a community of marketers on the front lines of the agile marketing transformation. She geeks out on all things agile and content on LinkedIn and Twitter.
