For more than a decade, the industry has convinced itself that it knows the audience. In reality, we’ve only ever known what audiences do, never what they feel. We’ve measured views, clicks, impressions, dwell time, reach… everything except the one thing that actually drives human behaviour — emotion.
At DiO, we believe the most powerful force in creativity isn’t attention — it’s human emotional reaction. Real, involuntary, biological truth. And this past year, we proved something the industry has long suspected but never been able to quantify: Emotional connection is measurable and can be predictive.
That discovery doesn’t just tweak the rules of advertising and entertainment, it rewrites them. And it introduces a new metric to the industry — Immersion
Immersion: The metric that changes what ‘good’ looks like
The old world ran on eye-tracking, recall, liking, and focus-group rationalisations.
The new world will run on Immersion — DiO’s behavioural metric that blends emotional activation, attention, and cognitive involvement to quantify the exact moments content truly connects.
This metric doesn’t rely on claimed response, or self-report bias, and it is not just what people say they feel — but what their bodies reveal.
The impact of DiO metrics, incorporating Immersion, are potentially seismic.
We’ve found that DiO metrics explain approximately 69% of the observed change in brand sentiment uplift, across campaigns. And our metrics are, on average, 93% accurate at predicting opening weekend box office results.
In a world drowning in vanity KPIs and outdated testing norms, Immersion isn’t just another metric — it’s creative truth. And creative truth is commercial power.
The industry’s at a tipping point — Immersion is the new competitive advantage
As AI accelerates production, lowers barriers, and floods the world with ‘content’, the industry is facing a crisis: Everything is starting to look and sound the same, producing a sea of sameness.
Creativity isn’t dying, but it’s being suppressed by systems that prioritise safety over creative bravery and by testing frameworks built for a world that no longer exists.
But here’s the opportunity: Bold creativity isn’t just back, it’s becoming the only thing that cuts through.
When you can see moment by moment exactly where a story hits, where it loses power, and where an audience shifts from being passive to deeply engaged — and then to being immersed — something extraordinary happens:
Creativity becomes braver. Decisions become sharper. Output truly reflects creator intent.
This is the creative revolution the industry has been waiting for — and emotional data is the fuel.
The shift has already begun
2025 proved that the future of advertising, entertainment and brand building will belong to the creators and brands that prioritise human emotional truth over superficial metrics.
In 2026, emotion and Immersion will move from early adoption to industry standard — not because it’s new but because the industry finally sees that attention is not enough, emotion is the engine of effectiveness, and that human reaction is measurable.
This is where human reactions become creative intelligence and how brands, agencies, marketers and storytellers will win the next decade.
To discuss how DiO can help drive your business, contact: tanya.easterman@wearedio.com
Main image by Fabian Jones on Unsplash
