Advertising Testing: Is Your Ad Doing its Job?

Great ads can do wonders for a business, however, even a great ad concept can fail. Advertising is one of the most expensive marketing avenues irrespective of its type - print, broadcast or online. Considering the volatile and subjective nature of advertising, and that it demands a high financial investment, the process of ad testing becomes significant.

With an ad testing program in the picture, one can be confident about an ad concept before launching a campaign. It is a relatively inexpensive and efficient way to figure out if a creative concept would work or not and whether to invest in it.

Ad testing: What does it mean?

In an advertising testing program, various ad concepts are tested in front of a sample target audience to solicit feedback. The insights so obtained facilitate the key tweaks that help to further develop and foster the most ideal concept through to seamless execution.

Testing a set of new ad concepts against the existing ones, as well as that of competitors, measures the potential of a campaign for a brand and its products. 

What are the ad testing options? When should the one testing option be used vs. another?

Advertising testing is broadly divided into two types:

• Concept testing 

Concept testing, also known as pre-testing, is generally investigative in nature. It uses various qualitative research techniques to draw insights regarding the effectiveness of ad concepts, identify problems or issues associated, and identify if new ad concepts need to be generated.

• Copy testing

Copy testing, on the other hand, evaluates the executions of an ad campaign by employing quantitative research techniques. The testing method may involve physiological measures such as eye-movement analysis, galvanic skin-response methods and brain-wave analysis to obtain desired insights. This testing type is used to determine the ad and further brand recall. 

In general, both types of testing can be employed, depending upon the investments involved or the significance of the advertising campaign. The concept testing can be used for the initial stages of campaign development while using copy testing to select the final ad campaign that would go live.

Pre-test yields key insights into what might work for an audience while the post-test is where the real learnings come into play.

For online ads, testing can be conducted using A/B testing. In this method, the version ‘A’ of an ad is shown to one segment of the audience while version ‘B’ is presented to another set of audience. Responses generated from both sets are then measured, refined and improved to create a suitable campaign. 

To test an ad with a large number of variables, statistical experimental designs can be used.

Why Invest in Ad Testing?

1. To identify the most effective ad campaign idea before its launch for driving growth.

2. To enhance the effectiveness of a campaign by several folds. 

3. To quantify the effectiveness of an ad campaign while analyzing audience reactions and responses, too:

• Evaluate the true impact of the campaign

• Measure ROI accurately

• Determine the metrics requiring additional attention.

• Dive into some other tangible benefits of Ad Testing

• Ensure that tailored creative concepts resonate with the target audience

• Better conversion rates to cement the brand 

• Boost the positive associations that come with the campaign

• Provide data to back up business decisions

• Generates ideas for further improvement 

• Provides a better understanding and segmentation of various audiences

• Help a firm to iterate quickly

 

How to run an ad test?

To run an effective ad testing program, the following steps can be followed

• Define an objective by asking ‘what the ad wants to convey?’ ‘Is it promoting a new product well?’ Will it drive more sales of an existing product?’

• Identify the stimuli, which can be in the form of videos, images, copy, audio, or a combination of these elements, to test. 

• Pick the ad metrics among appeal, believability, purchase intent, relevance and uniqueness to measure.

• Send your survey to the target audience to determine the quality of the ads.

• Compare and analyze the responses with a scorecard and word clouds.

Best practices for ad testing

• Consistent metrics across ads facilitate fair comparison.

• High-quality visuals generate quality feedback and strengthen the brand perception.

• Use a statistically significant panel to make the test program time and cost-effective.

• Limiting the number of questions yields accurate and quality insights.

• Benchmark the responses by including competitor's ads in the survey to allow respondents to compare.

• Make it purpose-driven, if possible.

Pitfalls to Avoid

• Assuming that you know the target market defeats the whole purpose of ad testing.

• Using excessive ‘sales or pushy language may turn off potential customers.

• Designing distracting ads can also cost customers.

• Using multiple call-to-action signals confuses the potential customer and hence they disengage with the ad.

• Not connecting the ad with the associated brand causes a massive dip in the ad’s effectiveness.

Now, let’s check out a case study detailing how Borderless Access helped a client to test the effectiveness of an ad campaign.

Study Objective

A governing body in KSA wanted to preserve and develop archaeological and historical sites of a Saudi city by building familiarity and grow the visitor base in the city. To meet the purpose, the official body needed to test four ads on the rationale and emotional attributes. The client additionally wanted ways to create a shorter version of the ads to be used in the future.

The Research Framework

We tested the Ads using a quantitative and neuromarketing technique, to understand the preference and decode unspoken emotions. 

Affluent travelers in KSA were targeted to evaluate the four Ads. We used the highly-targeted monadic method of concept testing where each respondent evaluated one Ad to evaluate the single concept in-depth. 

All the audience groups were quota-controlled to match demographic and segmentation profiles among groups and avoid sample bias.

The rationale features were based on neuromarketing. Neuromarketing technologies keep track of people’s emotional responses from second to second. It hence helps in identifying the ads that generate stronger emotions.

The rationale attributes, on the other hand, were based on 7 core metrics as following

• Overall Likeability

• Music - Likeability

• Believability

• Relevance

• Differentiation

• Consideration

• Call to action (want to find more information)

We also delivered insights to help the client understand how to create a cut-down version of the ads by picking the most engaging/eye-catching elements that can be aired in the future as well. The combination of Neuromarketing face recognition decoding helped in identifying the prominent emotions in the ads and optimizing the length and message of the ads.

Findings

• At a rational level (quantitative), all ads performed at a similar level, but Ad2 showed better association with the client’s brand pillars.

• At a subconscious level (emotions), Ad2 generated stronger sentiments and reactions, which are better sustained throughout the Ad, giving it an emotional advantage over the rest.

• Ad2 seems to be driven by the script of the ad and then further differentiated through the music.

Ad2 can be prioritized to start with and the ad emotions/engagement findings can be utilized to cut short the ad videos. In this study, testing ad stimuli with neuromarketing helped to identify the strongest emotions which further provided insights to create the cut-down versions for high-performing campaigns.

Final Thoughts

A refined understanding of the audience, what they want and how to appeal to the rationale and emotional sides of their brains is vital for any ad to be effective. Hence ad testing is a must for any marketer to maximize campaign performance and avoid potential risks.