Neural pre-testing for video ads

See where an ad holds attention and how it feels — predicted from the file, before you spend a dollar.

Soma predicts the average viewer's second-by-second brain response with Meta's TRIBE v2, then reads an attention arc and a coarse affect arc off it — no panel, no survey, in minutes.

01 · occipital lobe · V1

The ad enters the brain here.

Primary visual cortex. TRIBE v2 predicts the second-by-second cortical response straight from the video file — benchmarked against real fMRI.

02 · superior temporal · fusiform

Grounded in biology — not just cuts.

The face- and voice-sensitive cortex — the wedge. A brain-grounded read carries signal a loudness-and-cuts detector can't, and that an LLM role-playing a viewer only guesses at.

03 · default-mode network

Where the ad holds — and where it loses them.

A moment-to-moment attention arc: bright where it holds, dimming where attention leaks, with weak-spot callouts pinned to the timeline.

04 · OFC · insula

How the moment feels.

Orbitofrontal and insular cortex read out valence and arousal — pleasant vs unpleasant, calm vs excited — beat by beat.

See the live read-out
soma · analyzedemo
1 · Pick an ad
2 · Neural read-out (one shared timeline)
Predicted cortical activation0.0s
Whole-cortex activation magnitude · average viewer · normalized 0–1 · 1 Hz.
Attention arcwhere the ad holds vs loses people
Valence · feels good ↔ badpleasant (up) / unpleasant (down)
Arousal · calm ↔ excitedhow worked-up the moment is
0:00 / 0:00
Upload your own ad

Drop a video (mp4 / mov / webm, ≤ 150 MB). We run it through the brain and send back the arc — concierge for now, minutes not days.

Compare · A / B

Which ad holds attention better, moment to moment?

Overlay two predicted attention arcs on one timeline — the read most performance teams actually want. Test every cut, not just the one you can afford to panel.

Roadmap

The road to specific, named emotions

Attention and 2D affect ship today. Named emotions ("amusement", "tension", "warmth") come next, as Soma learns from the ads and real audience reactions its design partners generate.