UNIST BCILAB, directed by Prof. Sung-Phil Kim recently joined a newly initiated multi-institutional research project for the development of advanced technology for the over-the-top (OTT) smart media. This research project is funded by the national research funding (NRF) agency of Korea as a part of the information technology research center (ITRC) program. Led by the School of Media at Korea University, the Smart Media Service Research Center (SSRC) has recently been selected to be funded by the ITRC program this year.  The ITRC program will support SSRC for as long as 8 years, with funding of 880,000K KRW per year in total. SSRC will develop multidisciplinary technologies and services, including fundamental IT services, innovative technology such AI and neuromarketing, data science solutions, OTT contents and smart media service platforms.

AI and neuromarketing research project of OTT media

UNIST BCILAB will lead one of the five focused research groups to develop AI and neuromarketing technologies for the OTT smart media. Overall, BCILAB has two primary study goals: development of neuromarketing solutions for understanding viewers’ cognitive and affective responses to OTT media contents, and cognitive neuroscience study to model viewers’ behavior to choose OTT contents. To trace and analyze viewers’ cognitive and affective states while they are watching OTT contents, BCILAB will develop a neuromarketing tool to measure various physiological and behavioral data, including electroencephalogram (EEG), eye gaze, facial expression and photoplethysmography (PPG), as well as to analyze these data together using AI algorithms to produce insightful and intriguing outcomes regarding cognitive and affective responses (e.g. flow, arousal, engagement, etc.) to the media (see figure below). BCILAB will also investigate how and why viewers choose one of the endlessly produced media contents (e.g. netflix) in the perspective of decision-making behavioral and neural sciences along with computational models. Neuroscience tools such as EEG and eye tracking will also be of importance to help uncover underlying mechanisms of viewers’ choice behavior for OTT media contents (see examples below). BCILAB envisions that these new approaches will contribute to understand viewers’ behavioral and cognitive processes for OTT media, which will become increasingly important in the upcoming future with more individualized and diverse media consumptions.

EEG tracing during watching media contents.

Models to depict choice behavior