How To Advertise: An Analysis of Contemporary Advertising (part 17)

Basic Methods for Testing Ads

by

Charles Lamson

Although there is no infallible way to predict advertising success or failure, pretesting and posttesting can give an advertiser useful insights if properly applied.

Pretesting methods     Advertisers often pretest ads for likability and comprehension by using a variety of qualitative and quantitative techniques.

For example, when pretesting print ads, advertisers often ask direct questions: What does the advertising say to you? Does the advertising tell you anything new or different about the company? If so, what? Does the advertising reflect activities you would like to participate in? Is the advertising believable? What effect does it have on your perception of the merchandise offered? Do you like the ads?

Through direct questioning, researchers can elicit a full range of responses from people and thereby infer how well advertising messages convey key copy points. Direct questioning is especially effective for testing alternative ads in the early stages of development, when respondents reactions and input can best be acted on. There are numerous techniques for pretesting print ads, including focus groups, order-of-merit tests, paired comparisons, portfolio tests, mock magazines, perceptual meaning studies, and direct mail tests.

Several methods are used specifically to pretest radio and TV commercials. In central location tests, respondents are shown videotapes of test commercials, usually in shopping centers, and questions are asked before and after exposure. In clutter tests, test commercials are shown with noncompeting control commercials to determine their effectiveness, measure comprehension and attitude shifts, and detect weaknesses.

A company's own employees are an important constituency. Some companies, in fact, pretest new commercials by prescreening them on their in-house cable TV systems and soliciting feedback.

The Challenge of Pretesting     There is no best way to pretest advertising variables. Different methods test different aspects, and each has its own advantages and disadvantages---a formidable challenge for the advertiser.

Pretesting helps distinguish strong ads from weak ones. But since the test occurs in an artificial setting, repondents may assume the role of expert or critic and give answers that do not reflect their real buying behavior. They may invent opinions to satisfy the interviewer, or be reluctant to admit they are influenced, or vote for the ads they think they should like.

Researchers encounter problems when asking people to rank ads. Respondents often rate the ones that make the best first impression as the highest in all categories (the halo effect). Also questions about the respondent's buying behavior may be invalid; behavior intent may not become behavior fact. And some creative people mistrust ad testing because they believe it stifles creativity.

Despite these challenges, the issue comes down to dollars. Small advertisers rarely pretest, but their risk is not as great, either. When advertisers risk millions of dollars on a new campaign, they must pretest to be sure the ad or commercial is interesting, believable, likable, and memorable---and reinforces the brand image.

Posttesting methods     Posttesting can be more costly and time-consuming than pretesting, but it can test ads under actual market conditions. Some advertisers benefit from pretesting and posttesting by running ads in select test markets before launching a campaign nationwide.

As in pretesting, advertisers use both quantitative and qualitative methods in posttesting. Most posttesting techniques fall into five broad categories: unaided recall, attitude tests, inquiry tests, and sales tests.

Some advertisers use attitude tests to measure a campaign's effectiveness in creating a favorable image for a company, its brand, or its products. Presumably, favorable changes in attitude predispose consumers to buy the company's product.

IAG Research has developed a syndicated data seevice called IAG Ad that the company administers for such clients as American Express, General Motors and Procter & Gamble. Using more than 80,000 surveys, IAG Ad key data about the ads that viewers watched the night before and generates a detailed performance analysis that includes brand recall, message understanding, likability, and purchase intent. This tool helps advertisers understand the actual effectiveness of their ads.

Similarly, Nissan interviews 1,000 consumers every month to track brand awareness, familiarity with vehicle models, recall of commercials, and shifts in attitude or image perception. If a commercial fails it can be pulled quickly.

Children's clothing manufacurer Healthtex consucted some posttesting and discovered that, while new mothers appreciated the information in the long copy format of their ads, more experienced mothers did not. For them, the headline and one line of copy were sufficient to get the point across. They already understood the rest. As a result, the company used the shorter format and redesigned the ads aimed at experienced parents.

The challenge of posttesting     Each posttesting method has limitations. Recall tests reveal the effectiveness of ad components, such as size, color, or themes. But they measure what respondents noticed, not whether they actually buy the product.

For measuring sales effectiveness, attitude tests are often better than recall tests. An attitude change relates more closely to product purchase, and a measured change in attitude gives management the confidence to make informed decisions about advertising plans. Unfortunately, many people find it difficult to determine and express their attitudes. For mature brands, brand interest may be a better sales indicator, and advertisers now measure that phenomenon. 

By using inquiry tests---in which consumers respond to an ad for information or free samples---researchers can test an ad's attention-getting value, readability, and understability. These tests also permit fairly good control of the variables that motivate reader action. The inquiry test is also effective for testing small-space ads.

Unfortunately, inquiries may not reflect a sincere interest in the product, and responses may take months to receive. When advertising is the dominant element or the only variable in the company's marketing plan, sales tests are a useful measure of advertising effectiveness. However, many other variables usually affect sales (competitors' activities, the season of the year, and even the weather). Sales response may not be immediate, and sales tests, particularly field studies, are often costly and time-consuming.

For consumer packaged goods, though, the cost of sales tests has been greatly reduced thanks to grocery store scanners. Finally, sales tests are typically more suited for gauging the effectiveness of campaigns than of individual ads or components of ads.

*SOURCE: CONTEMPORARY ADVERTISING 11TH ED., 2008, WILLIAM F. ARENS, MICHAEL F. WEIGOLD, CHRISTIAN ARENS, PGS. 222-225*  

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