'Face reading' technology is now a reality for marketers DIGITAL technology has already revolutionised the market research industry, providing the ability to survey large numbers of people online, but the inability to read someone's face, or verify their age and gender, has always been a problem. Virtual face-to-face technology that will give marketers the ability to analyse people's faces as they react to an ad or a product is the next frontier, according to online market research group Vision Critical. The Canadian-based company recruits representative research panels to allow its clients to conduct regular market research with online communities of fans, customers, members and others. According to global president and founder Andrew Reid, the company - which has high-profile Australian clients including Telstra, Target, the AFL and Kimberly-Clark - is looking to incorporate the ability to interpret facial reactions to decipher people's emotional responses into its business. "For us, it's about integrating with more of these technologies that are out there from the big data space to social media," Mr Reid, who was in Sydney recently for a company conference, told The Australian. "One example is being able to track people's emotional responses by using a web cam," he said. "We tell them, "We're going to show you a video or an image, we'd like you to look at it, and then we'll ask you some questions." Algorithms record their emotional reaction. Are they delighted, are they intrigued, are they bored? It's another interesting way to get that pre-cognitive feedback. The company is in talks with technology suppliers in this space, including Realeyes - which calls itself "the Google of emotions." Research is also moving into the social media sphere. " (Generation Y) doesn't check email," Mr Reid said. They're getting invitations to interact via their Facebook wall. Vision Critical has more than 40 clients in Australia and claims to reduce market research costs dramatically by allowing marketers to conduct their own research as often as every two weeks online. That means companies also react to topics that have been trending in the social media space on sites such as Twitter, to see if the opinions being expressed are held widely within their customer base. As people begin to spend more time on mobile devices than on desktop or laptop computers, mobile is another developing area. "We've launched a whole new suite of mobile capabilities," Mr Reid said. Getting feedback from customers and location data - understanding where someone is and sending them something based on them entering a store - will be hugely important. Mr Reid, who comes from a family of political pollsters, says citizen engagement with governments is another developing research sphere in North America. "Governments can now show up and say, 'We've talked to 20,000 people in the past hour about what you folks are doing," he said. The ability to use this as a replacement for the old town hall meeting and leverage the speed of social conversations can be a very powerful thing.