NBCU taps AI emotion measurement firm Canvs for viewer surveys

NBC Universal is partnering with artificial intelligence-powered emotion measurement firm Canvs in an effort to get a “consistent and accurate” grasp of open-ended survey responses.

The news came as New York-based Canvs announced the launch of Canvs Surveys, a language-emotion AI designed to help researchers identify “the hidden meanings of how people feel below the surface of open-ended survey responses”.

“Having just wrapped up our first pilot testing using Canvs Surveys, I can say with confidence this isn’t an iterative improvement for the research community, it’s a first-ever,” claimed Benoit Landry, senior director of program research at NBCUniversal.

“We went from spending 16 hours trying to hand sort open-ended survey responses, down to one hour with Canvs, and that’s in addition to never-before-seen normative insights across pilots. It’s an extraordinary efficiency gain and cost savings for NBC for something we do dozens of times each year.”

NBC has already been using Canvs’ flagship TV product for several years, using Canvs to map the ‘emotional resonance’ of specific characters, plotlines and moments and taking these insights to help develop, program and market content.

“Combining Canvs Surveys with our long-standing investment in Canvs TV, combined with Canvs’ scale across the media landscape, ensures we’re normalising our qualitative measurement benchmarking over time and across the industry,” added Landry.