Co-founded by Imperial College London Business School MBA Mike Follet and business partner Rob Stevens, Lumen Research uses technology to monitor viewers’ eyes and find out what aspects of advertisement are most appealing.
Mike was inspired to create the startup while studying at Imperial and began work before he graduated. Six months down the line, and he is hoping to use the UK market as a launch-pad to roll the service out world-wide. Find out why advertising needs eye-tracking tech in this exclusive interview!
What's the company size?
There are three of us. I started the business with a partner and we have just hired an analyst.
Which sector do you operate in?
Advertising research or market research.
What does the business do and what are your core/ flagship products?
We do a tracking of communications. We help optimize advertising by showing adverts to people on a screen, and take pictures of their eyes as they move across the screen, understanding where on the screen they look during an advert, and how long they look these things.
Eye tracking has been around for about five years and is mainly used in website design. We also show different people versions of websites and ask them to make a purchase or find information. Eye tracking helps you work out where on the screen people are looking, and how easy it is to navigate on websites.
Who is the CEO/ founder?
I co-founded the company with my business partner, Rob Stevens.
How and when was the company founded?
When I was working for Tesco advertising agencies, I asked a user-experience company if they could replicate the same service for advertising, and they said yes. It was on that basis that I saw what was possible.
So I’m a client that has become or decided to go and work for the business; I thought it was very powerful idea and a means of solving problems for Tesco. After I did an MBA, I realised this is a good business, in an area that no one else is doing yet and that offers value for clients.
So while studying at Imperial, I started the business with someone I had previously worked with, in May.
Which regions are covered?
We work anywhere in the United Kingdom. We can go anywhere in the world in theory, but at the moment we are UK-focused. The UK is very advanced when it comes to advertising analysis and research. It’s something we don’t really talk about a lot ,but genuinely we are world leaders in professional services for advertising.
It’s an area of national strength. If we get it right here, we can roll out to the rest of the world.
Number of current MBAs at the company?
Just myself.
Who to contact if interested in working for you?
We’re looking to hire another data analyst.
You can contact mike.follett@lumen-research.com.
Something interesting about Lumen Research in your own words...
We’re applying the film Money Ball to advertising, and we’re at the cutting edge. Our aim is to apply the statistical sophistication that you see in the City to marketing, because it’s currently not there.
We’re unique in our mode of action. There are other companies that do behaviour economics for marketing, but they tend to be pure consultancies. We take a different tact of giving you data on what is actually happening. So in that sense we are fairly unique at the moment.
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