Market researchers at Ipsos are now able to delve into consumers’ unconscious minds thanks a new partnership with neuromarketing firm Innerscope Research Inc.

Announced last week, the deal will allow Ipsos to integrate Innerscope’s biometric measurement methods and technology, which can track a subject’s emotional reactions to an advertisement or package design, for example, in real-time.

‘We’ve always been aware that so much response occurs when people aren’t even aware that they’re responding,’ David Brandt, who oversees product development at Ipsos’ Open Thinking Exchange, said in an interview with Media In Canada. ‘That’s the nature of the way our minds work and that’s what we haven’t been able to get at.’

Ipsos will train its staff to use Innerscope’s portable biometric sensor belt, which monitors skin sweat, heart rate, respiration and movement to gather information to be analyzed by Innerscope’s neuroscience experts and then integrated into the final report.

Brandt says the research giant has been considering a neuromarketing partner for a while, but wanted to find a company with a system that was scalable globally. In 2009, the company was validated by the Advertising Research Foundation Research Review process.

‘This is the time to do it,’ he says. ‘The industry and the state of the art has come along far enough that it can be easily integrated into our existing products. It’s not too complicated, simple to understand and simple to deliver to our clients. It simply is an evolution of the neuroscience industry.’

The two companies signed an agreement earlier this year and have already conducted a number of pilot tests, but no emotion-based data has been released yet.

At first, Ipsos will integrate the technology into its ASI AdLab, a testing system designed to optimize the effectiveness of advertising creative, and Ipsos ASI Next*Connect and Innoscreen Concepts and Pack Evolution marketing tools.

One ad category Brandt believes will benefit from unconscious emotional data is consumer goods. ‘If we can help clients understand how to build emotion into their advertising it will work better and it will resonate better with the consumers,’ he says.