Advertising creative has long been designed to elicit or capitalize on consumer emotions to serve different purposes, be it deepened brand connection and affinity or to drive sales. But now LG is teaming up with tech company Zenapse to do some reverse engineering of sorts and instead zero in on audience emotions and motivators beforehand so that advertisers can deliver more precisely targeted CTV ad messages that resonate with viewers’ personal mindsets.
Enhanced and more precise audience segments for targeted CTV advertising is just the first product the two are bringing to market together under what’s a broader partnership – a relationship that LG told StreamTV Insider “opens the door to future innovations that could shape new emotionally intelligent experiences for the TV screen.”
But first things first. Before potentially creating new experiences, LG is incorporating Zenapse’s existing proprietary Large Emotion Model (LEM) and emotional intelligence data into its CTV ad offering as part of a multi-year licensing partnership with LG Ad Solutions Innovation Labs.
So what is an LEM and what is the aim?
Many are likely familiar with the term LLMs (Large Language Model) for powering generative AI platforms, which are designed to generate and interpret language. An AI LEM, meanwhile, is built to understand emotional and psychological drivers.
“It helps decode a viewer’s mindset – what motivates them, what resonates – so brands can deliver more relevant and compelling marketing messages,” an LG spokesperson told StreamTV Insider.
In announcing the new partnership and in response to questions from STV Insider LG used a few different terms, from “psychographic targeting” to “emotionally aware advertising.” This differs somewhat from some other forms of targeted advertising that have gained interest in CTV, such as contextual targeting that’s based on aligning with moods and themes or other aspects in content that a viewer is watching. While some forms of contextual targeting are emotion-based (like that from Wurl), and contextual relevance of content can play a role, the main focus for LG and Zenapse is to understand and deliver targeted, emotionally-resonant ad messaging based on individuals’ overarching mindsets, values and motivators - not just what they’re watching.
That said, viewing behavior and content consumption does play a key role to enhance targeting, as the partnership combines the emotional mindset data from Zenapse with LG’s first-party viewership signals.
How does it work to do that? The Zenapse LEM classifies emotional context of each episode of content after collating publicly available script and plot information. Then the LEM indexes and categorizes users based on their dynamic consumption patterns – delivering the audience segment product that the partners are coming to market with. Also key to the partnership is tying in LG’s automatic content recognition (ACR) viewership data captured across some 45 million CTVs in the US (with the collaboration extending across 200 million LG smart TVs globally), where the Zenapse model can understand and prescribe emotion “bringing together emotional mindset modeling and real-world viewing behavior to create richer and more precise audience definitions.”
Another phrase is emotional intelligence (to be clear, in this regard, emotional intelligence refers to insights gleaned from the partnership into viewers’ emotions and mindset, not individuals’ capacities), which Zenapse promises to deliver for LG advertisers through its proprietary LEM and so-called emotional mindset modeling.
LG shared scenario of how an advertiser could put that emotional intelligence data and new audience segments to use to better target the smart TV maker’s viewers: For example, a wellness brand that’s looking to inspire consumers and wants to target viewers who exhibit an aspirational mindset.
“Zenapse identifies individuals motivated by personal growth, and LG’s ACR data pinpoints relevant viewing behaviors—such as engagement with fitness or self-improvement content. That combination allows advertisers to serve empowering creative that speaks to the viewer’s motivations in a relevant context,” LG explained. Some example audience segments in that scenario could be “goal-driven achievers,” “social connectors,” or “emotionally engaged planners.”
The thinking is that this helps advertisers go beyond traditional demographics and reach viewers in ways that are more meaningful by better understanding their motivations, values and personality traits so that ads feel “more human and personally relevant.”
According to LG, the integration also addresses key CTV advertising challenges including limited audience signal depth, creative fatigue and the difficulty of scaling emotional relevance. As we've seen before, while ad creatives try to tap into consumer emotions, proving success and scaling that relevance isn't necessarily an easy or often feasible feat. With the partnership just announced, it remains to be seen how LG and Zenapse deliver on their efforts.
“Putting together Zenapse's emotional intelligence AI capabilities and psychographic data with our proprietary technology is a win-win that enhances our ability to understand content, drive personalization, and improve targeting,” said David Rudnick, chief technology officer at LG Ad Solutions, in a statement. “Ultimately, this helps advertisers forge deeper connections with viewers, maximize campaign performance, and increase ad relevance across connected environments.”
The Zenapse-powered audience segments will begin rolling out to LG CTV advertisers this year, with broader capabilities expected to follow as the partnership continues. All of the segments are unique, exclusive and contain LG-specific viewership seeds, enabling advertisers to reach audiences on a combination of emotional mindset signals paired with real viewing behavior. According to LG, it’s the only provider offering this product today.
The new audience segments can be applied to both CTV ad inventory on the smart TV maker’s LG Channels FAST service (which separately just added 40 channels from NBCU and has shoppable plans in the works), as well CTV ad inventory on the smart TV home screen and additional premium CTV environments.
Per an LG spokesperson, this supports the company’s broader vision to make the TV home screen a more intelligent and connected platform for discovery, commerce and engagement.
“Emotionally aware advertising is a key part of that vision—creating more personalized, high-impact experiences as the CTV landscape continues to evolve,” LG said via email.