Advertising Measures in Advertising Effectiveness

Advertising measures to test advertising

Advertising awareness measures determine whether some level of attention was paid to the ad when exposed.
Different measures represent different levels of difficulty: less prompting around the category, brand, or advertising makes the memory task harder; if respondents can recall with limited prompting, it suggests the ad underwent more processing and left a stronger memory trace.

General advertising recall is not brand-specific and uses only a category prompt.
- People who answer yes can be asked follow-up questions about what they recall.
- You can then ask which brands they have seen advertising for; respondents can mention one or multiple brands.
- You can also prompt after specific brands.
You can prompt for specific media (e.g., asking if they have recently seen any advertising for Westpac in the newspaper).
Recall vs recognition: recall asks what was remembered without re-exposure, while recognition asks whether the respondent has seen the ad after re-exposure.

Recognition involves re-exposure to the ad or part of the ad, followed by questions about whether they have seen the ad.
Example: television ads – show still images from the ad that may not feature the brand; ask if the respondent saw the ad in a given media (e.g., television, YouTube).
Some argue recognition is a sufficient measure of advertising effects, particularly for low-involvement goods, because advertising works at low attention by building familiarity; therefore, it can be unnecessary to rely on harder recall measures.
If initial awareness questions do not reveal a brand name recall, you can follow up to ask which brands were advertised.

Brand linkage can be unprompted or prompted, making recall task harder or easier.
When prompting, you can add a time element to assess recognition speed; faster recognition suggests a stronger memory link.

Message comprehension assesses whether people understood the intended message.
This is important if the goal is to build specific memory structures to strengthen or increase mental availability (e.g., a category entry point).
Approaches to assess message comprehension include:
- Asking people to describe the message.
- Having people rate their agreement with statements that reflect potential takeouts from the ad.

Brand tracking looks at brand perceptions over time across the market as campaigns air.
It indirectly measures the impact of advertising on mental availability at a market level without asking about a person’s response to a specific ad.

Liability or attitude scores refer to consumers’ evaluative judgments of advertising.
Measures of how much they like an ad or how positive they feel toward it are often used.
Industry practice: likability is commonly collected as a single-item question; academics often prefer multi-item attitude scales.
In practice, multi-item attitudes and single-item likability tend to be highly correlated, meaning they tap into related underlying thoughts.
Directly asking how people feel about ads is possible but arguably flawed because emotions are largely subconscious and not always expressible or reportable accurately.

Dial (DIALs) scales are a newer approach but can suffer from time lag between viewing and responding.
Self-Assessment Manikin (SAM) is a validated, picture-based scale to assess emotion across dimensions.
- Diagram (described): Respondents select a figure from each row of the assessment scale.
- Top row: valence (positive to negative) left to right.
- Middle row: arousal/intensity (strong to minimal) left to right.
- Bottom row: dominance (control over emotions) from little to a lot, left to right.
- Example task: pick one figure per row to indicate their current emotional state.

Persuasion measures aim to assess how advertising impacts willingness and intention to buy the brand.
Assumption: advertising should persuade people to buy by presenting reasons to choose the brand.
Persuasion data can be collected in two broad ways:
- POST: after exposure only – compare intended purchase across exposed vs. non-exposed groups to assess impact.
- Pre-post (before and after exposure): measure attitudes before exposure (unobtrusively) and after exposure to detect shifts toward the advertised brand.
There is substantial evidence that intentions are poor predictors of future behavior (the intention-behavior gap); life circumstances can prevent intentions from becoming actions.
Pre-post persuasion studies can show a shift in preferences, but they are not actual buying and should not be treated as shopping behavior.

A common approach involves a baseline task where respondents express preferences (e.g., what items they would like to win from a price drop).
After being exposed to the ad, the same respondents are asked to re-select brands from a set.
If a large number of respondents shift their selections toward the advertised brand, that shift is attributed to the persuasiveness of the advertising.
Caution: this method captures attitudinal or stated preferences rather than actual purchasing behavior.

Recognize the trade-offs between recall and recognition depending on campaign goals (brand familiarity vs. direct recall of ad content).
Consider prompting strategy carefully; prompting can artificially inflate recall or recognition by providing cues.
Understand timing and speed as indicators of memory strength; faster recognition can imply a stronger association with the brand.
Use message comprehension assessments to ensure the ad is communicating intended takeouts and to support building category entry points.
Brand tracking provides market-level insight into mental availability beyond responses to a single ad; useful for ongoing campaigns.
For emotions, choose measurement tools appropriate to the research context (SAM for structured emotion dimensions; DIALs for dial-based, time-sensitive responses), while acknowledging potential time lags and subconscious nature of emotions.
In persuasion research, balance post-exposure and pre-post designs; be mindful that intentions may not translate into actual behavior; use complementary metrics (e.g., actual purchase data, brand salience, reach, frequency) to triangulate.

The choice between recall and recognition affects how you interpret ad effectiveness, especially for low-involvement products where familiarity can drive outcomes.
Marketing researchers often rely on multiple measures (awareness, recall, recognition, comprehension, brand tracking, attitudes, emotions, and persuasion) to obtain a holistic view of an ad’s impact.
Designing studies with both category-level prompts and brand-level prompts helps differentiate memory strength from brand familiarity.
Ethical note: be transparent about the difference between measured attitudes or intentions and actual behavior; avoid overinterpreting intention-based results as buying actions.