Creating an effective TV ad means grabbing people emotionally within moments and creating an experience that is memorable. Often it’s the soundtrack that makes this difference between an ad that sinks and one that really sings. 

Well chosen music can be the element that transforms an ad. For those in the UK, consider how Ridley Scott in the Hovis “Boy on a Bike” ad from 1973 paired Dvořák’s New World Symphony (Largo) to evoke nostalgia, or how Guinness’ “Surfer” in 1999 charged its visuals with Leftfield’s driving Phat Planet. In 2007, Cadbury’s “Gorilla” used Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight to turn a surreal scene into something strangely visceral and memorable. Equally, the PG Tips “Al and Monkey” spot in 2008 revived the comic warmth of a Morecambe and Wise sketch with the cheeky brass of The Stripper. All of these were choices of music that helped make the ads unique.

What do these have in common? The soundtrack enhanced the story, set the emotional frame, and left a trace in memory long after the ad ended. There are many more that I can think of, and indeed many that might not be top of mind right now but that would immediately be familiar with only a second or two of reminder footage. 

More recently ad makers have discovered a trick to potentially broaden the appeal of their soundtracks: pick a song very familiar to older generations but re-record it in a more contemporary style to appeal to those who are younger. Then they get the best of both worlds: deep familiarity but also fresh novelty.

Music rides a fast track to the emotional centres of the brain. Research in affective neuroscience shows that music triggers rapid activity in subcortical regions linked to emotion, including the amygdala and nucleus accumbens, often before conscious appraisal can take place. Functional imaging also reveals strong coupling between auditory pathways and reward circuits, which helps explain why melody and rhythm can provoke visceral reactions within milliseconds of perception.

Music can return us to a past moment or era in an instant. Because we learn to link sound with emotion, a familiar track can revive bright, energising memories just as readily as it can draw out quieter, more wistful feelings. Music and sound can also evoke very specific feelings that visuals alone might struggle to. 

Equally, there’s something particularly pleasurable about a soundtrack that works precisely in time with the visual edit. When I worked on analysing TV ads using EEG and eye-tracking, we referred to this as audio-visual synchrony.  

As well as being instantly emotionally evocative, music can make an ad more memorable. At a simple level, just repeatedly pairing your brand with positive feelings from an enjoyable soundtrack will build positive associations with the brand. But also, the rhythm, rhyme and repetition of music and particularly brand jingles can make for an ad that is recognised instantly decades later. 

Choosing the right track sounds simple, yet it places enormous demands on the creative process. A piece of music has to fit tone, pacing, audience, brand identity and narrative structure, and those demands often pull in different directions. To make matters even more challenging, any choice that relies totally on gut feelings has to justify the cost of hiring the music for broadcast use. That’s why instinct alone struggles here, and why structured testing becomes so valuable.

This means that testing different options can be critically important. 

Right from the early days of the consumer neuroscience industry, the more pioneering and progressive ad agencies realised the potential for these techniques to be able to get under the skin of people's reactions to music. 

One of the challenges with music is that people struggle to articulate why something feels right. Much of its impact happens beneath awareness, within fast intuitive judgments. Our Reactor testing platform, with powerful features to run Implicit and response time tests, was built precisely for these kinds of questions. By focusing on rapid, instinctive responses rather than verbal ratings, it uncovers the emotional and behavioural effects that matter most.

Part of measuring the impact of music on advertising is also to be able to demonstrate its benefits in terms of hard return on investment. Yet this is a hard task as you would need to study a lot of TV ads, need the technology to measure responses from thousands of people, expertise in music and, importantly, data on the commercial success of the brand that can be attributed to the ad. 

Recently CloudArmy took part in a rare project that orchestrated all these requirements together: a project with our partners MassiveMusic (who use our Reactor testing platform and brought their vast musical expertise) and the London-based Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA) (who brought their data on the commercial success of a range of hundreds of ads that used music). 

This project, known as The Science of Sound, brought together MassiveMusic’s musical expertise, the IPA’s database of commercial outcomes, and CloudArmy’s Reactor platform to test 150 ads with 7,500 people. Reactor delivered each ad across phones, tablets, and laptops while capturing millisecond-accurate reaction times and running recall tests with carefully chosen distractor clips. The study analysed four dimensions — Musical Fit, Engagement, Surprise and Recall — and showed how each links to real marketing outcomes. Highly engaging music lifted ROI by over thirty percent on average, highly fitting music made people almost seven times more willing to pay more, and surprising or memorable music sharply boosted brand fame and salience. For the first time at this scale, the emotional power of music in advertising could be tied to measurable commercial impact, giving creative teams a practical framework for choosing the right soundtrack.

This study reinforces a simple point: when music aligns with the message and emotion of an ad, its effect can be both magical and commercially successful. For all the craft that goes into casting, writing and shooting, the soundtrack often determines whether a campaign fades away or becomes part of our culture. As creative teams continue to explore new ways to cut through, it is worth remembering that sound remains one of the most direct routes into memory and feeling. The evidence now shows what creative teams long sensed: get the music right, and your brand can enjoy real returns. 

To read more about the 'Science of Sound' case study click here.