Assessing Ad Message Effectiveness

Overview of Advertising Research It’s not easy or inexpensive but the value outweighs the drawbacks. More than 80% of advertisers and agencies pretest television commercials before airing them on a national basis.

What Does Advertising Research Involve? Media Effectiveness (covered later) Message Research To test effectiveness of messages Pretesting ads during developmental stages Posttesting to determine if messages achieve their established objectives

Four Stages At Which Ad Message Research Might Be Conducted Copy development stage “Rough” stage Final production stage After the ad has been run in the media

Industry Standards for Message Research Principle 1: provide measurements that are relevant to the advertising objectives Principle 2: requires agreement about how the results will be used in advance of each specific test Principle 3: provides multiple measurements because single measurements are generally inadequate

Industry Standards for Message Research Principle 4: based on a model of human response to communications Reception of a stimulus Comprehension of the stimulus The response of the stimulus Principle 5: allows for consideration of whether the advertising stimulus should be exposed more than once

Industry Standards for Message Research Principle 6: recognizes that a more finished piece of copy can be evaluated more soundly Alternative executions be tested in the same degree of finish Principle 7: system provides controls to avoid the bias normally found in the exposure context

Industry Standards for Message Research PACT Principles Principle 8: takes into account basic considerations of sample definition Requires that the sample be representative of the target audience Principle 9: can demonstrate reliability and validity A reliable test is one that yields consistent results A valid test is one that is predictive of the marketplace performance

What Can Be Learned from Message Research? Message research is needed to diagnose an advertisement’s prospective equity-enhancing and sales-expanding potential. The ARF assessed which of 35 measures best predicts the sales effectiveness of television commercials. The only definitive conclusion of their study is that no one measure is universally appropriate or best.

Quantitative Message Research Measurement Understanding Control Improvement

Measures of Recognition & Recall Bruzzone test Advertising Response Model (ARM) links responses to the 27 descriptive adjectives to consumers’ attitudes toward both the ad and the advertised brand and to purchase interest.

Measures of Recognition & Recall Bruzzone test Provides valid prediction of actual marketplace performance along with being relatively inexpensive Doesn’t provide a before-the-fact indication Tests offer important info for evaluating a commercial’s effectiveness and whether it should continue to run Tests are performed online

Measures of Recognition & Recall Burke Day-After Recall Testing Used to assess the effectiveness of test commercials and to ID strengths and weaknesses (1) Claimed-recall scores—indicate the percentage of respondents who recall seeing the ad (2) Related-recall scores—indicate the percentage of respondents who accurately describe specific advertising elements

Measures of Recognition & Recall Burke Day-After Recall Testing 3) Recall scores generated by ads are not predictive of sales performance 4) Day-after recall testing is biased against certain types of advertising content Understate the memorability of commercials that employ emotional or feeling-oriented themes and are biased in favor of rational or thought-oriented commercials

Measures of Recognition & Recall Measures of Physiological Arousal Ads that are better liked are more likely to be remembered and to persuade Efforts are now made to measure consumer’s affective and emotional reactions to ads

Measures of Recognition & Recall Measures of Physiological Arousal Galvanometer—measures minute levels of perspiration in response to emotional arousal Pupillometric tests—measure pupil dilation Advertising researchers use changes in physiological functions to indicate the actual, unbiased amount of arousal resulting from ads.

Measures of Persuasion Used when an advertiser’s objective is to influence consumers’ attitudes toward and preference for the advertised brand.

Measures of Sales Response Single-Source Systems Gather purchase data from panels of households using: (1) electronic television meters (2) optical laser scanning of universal product codes (UPC) at retail checkout (3) split-cable technology

Conclusions Ad copy must be distinctive Ad weight without persuasiveness is insufficient The selling power of advertising wears out over time Advertising works quickly if it works at all