Commerce

EyePredict leveraged predictive attention models to provide merchandising solutions. We established the feasibility of predicting what visual elements are likely to get noticed first by comparing our model predictions to visual engagement as measured by eye tracking and mouse clicks. This proof-of-concept led us to commercialize PlaceGage—a software-as-a-service solution that predicts visual engagement. To use it, customers upload an image, mark items of interest, and receive reports with EyePredict scores:

PlaceGage is useful for evaluating the likelihood of “mental clicks” with visual items: products on store shelves or in catalogs, logos in print or outdoor ads, virtual goods, etc. Customers included a Fortune 500 packaging company that offered to license the underlying technology, a multinational market research firm, a multinational produce seller, a national sporting goods chain, a consumer research consultancy, and others.

Market demand for more actionable information than mere predictions led us to develop EPflow: a software solution that enhances viewer engagement with relevant online items by re-positioning them on webpages based on attention predictions. EPflow performs directed search through a very large space of candidate layouts by leveraging PlaceGage as an internal engine to assess each layout and maximize EyePredict scores for relevant items that should get noticed.

A/B tests found strong lifts in key performance indicators (ex: CTR=175%), and in 2016 we licensed our EPflow software to an international web merchant that has been in business for >20 years.