Emotion in advertising: what happens once people have seen your ad (pt. 2)
Attention comes first. Once people see an ad, the next question is what they feel.
That order comes from Thomas Zoëga Ramsøy, founder and CEO of Neurons: in Part one, his advice was to make sure people see you before you start talking about emotion. Thomas has spent over twenty years using neuroscience to optimise campaigns.
Part one covered attention. This time, our CMO Stefania and Thomas get into emotion in advertising: how a message lands, how an ad should end, what an AI label does to the way people feel, and how teams decide whether it worked.
An emotional message can beat a better product
Thomas's view is that people respond to how an ad helps them, whether the purchase is for work or for home. His evidence is a pair of Danish hearing aid makers: the one with the technically best device led with graphs and jargon (written from the engineer’s side), and lost to the one that told people they would hear their grandchildren better (the buyer’s life afterwards, which is where the feeling is). A quick test for your own copy: can the headline finish the sentence "so you can..."?
For B2B, Thomas adds a second question: how can you help this person do better with their own stakeholders? B2B ads often carry every argument available, and people tune out when it feels like persuasion. His advice for emotional ads follows the same logic, because how an ad ends shapes what people take away. In his experience, ads that stay negative push people away, and ones that resolve into something positive can work better.
What this means for your work: Before a campaign goes out, check that it says what the buyer can now do and, if it is emotional, that it ends on a high note, since both decide whether the people you pay to reach stay with the ad or tune out.
A label can create a feeling the ad never did
Do people dislike AI-generated ads? Well, it depends on whether they are told. In the studies Thomas describes, people struggle to tell AI-generated ads from human-made ones, and across several studies the two show no difference in mid-funnel effectiveness. Once an ad is labelled as AI-generated, reactions turn negative, even when a person made it.
The ad stayed the same, so the feeling came from what people believe about it. That makes the story around an ad part of its emotional effect, and a label is part of that story.
The no-difference results come from before labelling was required, and since August 2026 the EU AI Act's transparency rules require AI-generated content to be disclosed in certain cases. Thomas thinks the reaction is mainly about humans in ads, and he expects it to pass as people get used to the technology, so today's result is a reading from one moment. If you run the internal test he suggests, with and without the label, put a date on it and run it again later.
What this means for your work: Before you put budget behind AI-generated ads that show people, ask whether you would still run them with a label on.
Reviews go in circles until everyone measures the same thing
Once people have seen an ad and felt something, someone still has to decide whether it worked. Thomas hears the same pressures wherever he works: too little time and budget, a more complex media landscape, and audiences who skip the ads. In his view, that leaves teams too busy to pick up the tools now available, so decisions lean on opinion.
A creative director, a performance marketer, an insights lead, and a CMO each bring their own measure. Each of them can be right about a different question: does it feel right, did it convert, did it register, does it build the brand. A review goes in circles when those questions share one meeting and nobody has said which one is on the table. Thomas's fix is a shared bottom line, with room left for everyone's own preferences.
His advice for a marketer starting out is to get good at data: the analysis itself, or explaining it so other people can use it. For a senior marketer, the explaining half is the one that scales, because it gets a whole room looking at the same number.
What this means for your work: Agree the measures before the next review, and the meeting can go on deciding which ads get budget.
3 things to try this week
- Write the sentence your buyer would use to recommend you. Thomas asks how you can help someone do better with their own stakeholders. Write the one line a buyer could say in their next meeting to explain why they chose you, then check that your ad gives them something close to it.
- Rewrite one headline around what the buyer can now do. Move from the spec to the outcome, the way "hear your grandchildren better" won over the graphs.
- Ask everyone who judges creative the same question. Which number would tell you this ad worked? Compare the answers, then agree on one shared set.
Once people have seen your ad, what do you want them to feel, and how will your team know it worked?
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📚 Part 1 of this episode will provide all the context you need to understand Thomas' arguments in part 2.
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