Ad Testing

By Courtney Parsons | August 31, 2011

Advertising can be one of the most difficult marketing tactics for which to measure return on investment. Advertising tracking studies allow you to:

  • Measure the effectiveness of creative executions against message strategies
  • Justify ROI by measuring purchased media outlets against the desired target audience

Some clients rely on Market Connections to conduct ad recall studies every six months so that, if necessary, they can tweak creative and/or media buys to improve effectiveness partway through the fiscal year. For other clients, we incorporate ad recall questioning into their annual market awareness studies, which provides reliable data for planning the next year’s ad campaign.

Among other things, we ask survey participants — who are aligned with the target audience of the ads:

  • When and where they first heard of the company
  • Their top-of-mind perceptions of its strengths, weaknesses, and offerings
  • If they recalled specific ads and, if so, what they recalled about them
  • Where they saw or heard the advertising

Even if respondents can’t remember if or where they saw the ads, you can feel assured campaigns are working when an acceptable percentage of respondents share perceptions that the advertising messages support.