Can the curl of a lip or the raising of an eyebrow really show that viewers are paying attention to commercials?

Yes, according to a new study from an industry think tank – as long the facial movements are tracked by special computer software.

The software, licensed for the study by Inter Public Group’s Media Lab in Los Angeles, uses cameras attached to video screens to track the movement of facial features. The movements are then converted into algorithms that calculate how much attention a viewer is paying to video content.

Brian Monahan, managing partner at the lab on L.A.’s Miracle Mile, said the software was originally developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to help autistic children recognize facial emotions and has since been commercialized.

This study didn’t delve into emotions, but rather used the facial data to track the position of viewers’ heads as they watched both online and television ads. For example, staring straight into the screen qualifies as full attention.

“There’s a whole debate about neuro-marketing biometrics and their accuracy, but in this case we were only looking at the position of the head, so I’m pretty confident our findings are legitimate,” Monahan said.

One finding of Media Lab’s study was that online video ads received 20 percent more full attention than TV commercials. That’s significant because on a per-viewer basis, online video cost about three times more than TV, and advertisers want to know if the premium is worth it.

The software is owned by Affectiva Inc., a Waltham, Mass. company that licenses it to academic investigators. The Media Lab study was its first use for market research.