Emojis in Amplify

Overview

The advertising industry has long recognized the importance of emotional impact, but most pre-testing tools fail to measure emotion across an entire sample, limiting their predictive power.

Zappi uses emojis to measure emotional response universally. As a well-established, non-verbal medium (recognized by Yale University as the world's fastest-growing language), emojis allow all respondents to express emotion without downloading an app or rationalising a feeling. This means emotional measurement is included in every test, for all respondents, at no extra cost.

Previously, emotional measurement was diagnostic-only due to the limitations of facial coding (small samples, limited market applicability). Emoji-based measurement is scalable and repeatable, allowing us to incorporate emotion into prediction modeling, strengthening the model's accuracy by capturing the link between emotional resonance and in-market sales impact.

Robust side-by-side research across 14 studies (n≈800 per study) confirmed strong correlation between the second-by-second emoji exercise and facial coding (0.86 UK, 0.70 US).

Which emojis and why 8?

A standardized set of 8 emojis was selected through research (n=2,015). Key findings showed that with more than 10 options, respondents become overwhelmed and selection accuracy drops. Larger sets introduce more nuanced, overlapping emotions (e.g. Fear vs. Disgust) that are harder to process quickly. More than 8 options creates a poor mobile experience.

The final 8, inspired by Facebook Live, Twitter, and Instagram reactions, are:

How are Emojis scored?

Love, surprise, laughter, and like contribute positively, while confusion, sad, angry, dislike and no emotion contribute negatively to the Overall Emotion score.

• Love (1.0)
• Surprise (0.6)
• Laughter (0.6)
• Like (0.6)
• Confusion (-0.1)
• Sad (-0.1)
• Angry(-0.4)
• Dislike(-0.4)
• None of the above (-1.0)