neuromarketing.com.au

A plain-language guide · consumer neuroscience in Australia

Neuromarketing, with the evidence beside it

Neuromarketing is the use of brain imaging and related methods to study how people respond to products and marketing. This guide explains what those instruments measure, what the studies have and have not shown, and the Australian rules on consent, privacy and persuasion that sit around the work.

It is published by Dotto, written from peer-reviewed research and from the guidance of Australian regulators. Each page lists its sources at its foot.

A drawn web page with an invented gaze path An illustration drawn for this guide: a simple web page with a headline, a product picture, a price panel and a button, overlaid with seven numbered circles joined by thin lines to show an order of looking, and soft violet and amber blooms where the drawn gaze lingers. It is not recorded data. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Illustration only. A drawn page and an invented gaze path: the numbers give an order of looking, the larger circles a longer look, and the warm blooms where it lingered. No one’s eyes were recorded to make it.

Six areas of interest

Each guide below takes one question. The first two are about the science; the next three are about the Australian rules for research, personal information and advertising; the last puts them together into questions you can ask of any claim.

  1. AOI 1 · The scienceWhat neuromarketing is

    The instruments, the hopes and what the studies found.

  2. AOI 2 · The scienceEye tracking and attention

    What gaze data can show, and what a study should report.

  3. AOI 3 · Research rulesConsent in research

    The National Statement on informed consent and limited disclosure.

  4. AOI 4 · Privacy rulesBiometric data and privacy

    Personal and sensitive information under the Privacy Act.

  5. AOI 5 · Advertising rulesPersuasion and the law

    Where urgency, scarcity and discounts become misleading.

  6. AOI 6 · Putting it togetherReading a neuromarketing claim

    Eight questions to ask of a study or a sales pitch.

Three things the research says plainly

  1. There is no single “buy button”

    Reviewing the field in 2010, the researchers Dan Ariely and Gregory Berns wrote that purchase decisions draw on many processes, and that no single brain region is responsible for a consumer’s choice. More in what neuromarketing is.

  2. Predictions are real but modest

    In a 2007 brain-imaging study of 26 adults by researchers at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon and MIT, activity in three brain regions predicted whether each person would buy a product about 60% of the time, against 50% for chance.

  3. The measures do not always agree

    A 2022 systematic review of 174 papers using EEG in neuromarketing found some measures more reliable than others, but limited consistency across the papers. More in reading a neuromarketing claim.

The Australian rules around the work

Three bodies of guidance, and where this guide covers each
AreaThe starting pointGuide
Research ethicsThe National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research sets national standards for research with people. Its 2025 edition came into effect on 23 June 2026.Consent in research
PrivacyUnder the Privacy Act, biometric information used for automated biometric verification or identification, and biometric templates, are sensitive information.Biometric data and privacy
AdvertisingThe ACCC says a business’s claims about its products must be accurate, truthful and based on reasonable grounds, and that it makes no difference whether the business meant to mislead.Persuasion and the law

About this guide

This is a guide to neuromarketing in plain words, published by Dotto. It describes research and the rules around it, and it is general information rather than legal or ethics advice. For your own project, the official places to check are the NHMRC’s National Statement page, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and the ACCC.

Where a page describes a study, it names the study and links the paper or the review that describes it. The drawings are illustrations made for this guide, and they say so.