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Key Points: As the saying goes, "a penny saved is a penny earned." If advertisers
think of the cost for efficiency testing as an investment that prevents future costly
mistakes they can think of the prevented costs as a penny earned and take full
advantage of the benefits of this strategy.
Pretesting can help companies improve their ads and save them money before it is too
late. However, many marketers the skip pre-testing because many believe being first
in the market offers them an advantage over competitors, so they forgo the research.
It's safe to say that there is no general consensus, on the part of advertisers or
advertising researchers, as to the best way to test advertising.
Advertisement is a communication whose purpose is to inform potential customers
about products and services and how to use and obtain them. Every major medium is
used to deliver these messages, including: television, radio, movies, magazines,
newspapers, and internet. It is often placed by an advertising agency on behalf of a
company. Advertisement influence our lives in many unsuspecting ways because of
rapid changes in the macro environment. These days advertising is regarded as a paid
form of non-personal presentation of ideas, goods and services by an identified
sponsor Testing or evaluation of advertising effectiveness refers to the managerial
exercise aimed at relating the advertising results to the established standards of
performance and objectives so as to assess the real value of the advertising
performance. This evaluation exercise is also known as the advertising research. It is a
research activity undertaken to measure the worth of the specific elements of an
advertisement or the aspects of entire advertising programme. It is an attempt to know
whether the message designed properly has reached the greatest number of prospects
at the least practical cost. There are various types of media use for advertising these
are: print media, electronic media etc. Of all the media, newspaper is considered as
the backbone of advertising programme as it has continued to remain the most
powerful message carrier. Of the total space, 45 percent goes to advertisements in
form or the other and rest for textual matter.

Introduction:
In today's advertising world, every firm invests heavily on advertisement for making
their products or services known to the target audience and to arouse the interest of
target audience in firm's products or services. Advertising is done with some
predefined objectives to generate awareness about product, to arouse interest in
product, to change the attitude of audience towards product, to stimulate desire for
product, or to make them buy the product. Advertising is of no use if the defined
objectives of communication are not achieved.
John Wanamaker's famous quote on advertising I know half the money I spend on
advertising is wasted, but I can never find out which half. Measuring of advertising
effectiveness is one of the areas of advertising about which nothing can be said for
sure. This practically begs for a method to identify effective advertising campaigns,
commercials, or print advertising. Since heavy amount is spent every year on
advertising campaigns it becomes necessary for management to evaluate the
effectiveness of advertising. Measuring advertising effectiveness is a measure to know
whether the time and money invested in creating an advertisement have resulted in
successful attainment of the objective of sales growth and profit maximisation to the
adviser. Management wants to know the extent to which advertising programme of
the enterprise has been successful. Such evaluation is called evaluation of advertising
effectiveness. It is a managerial exercise to know whether the message has reached
the largest number of prospect at the least cost. This is the only way to know how the
advertisement is performing, is it reaching the targets and is the goal achieved.
It is not at all possible to measure advertisement effectiveness accurately as there are
many factors like making a brand image, increasing the sales, keeping people
informed about the product, introducing new product, etc., which affect the
effectiveness of an advertisement.
We all know that there are some companies who advertise at very low level but still
their products are a hit and some companies indulge in very heavy advertisements but
they dont get desirable results. But then, there are some traditional and modern tools
to measure most of the effectiveness of an advertisement through which the advertiser
can or may get more and more information about how their ads and product are
performing in the market.

Importance of Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness:

Evaluation of Advertising is Important because of following reasons:
1. Achieve advertising objectives: Huge amount of money is spent on advertising to
increase sales and goodwill of the company. It is evident that companies want to know
whether these objectives are achieved or not. This is done by measuring effectiveness
of advertising.
2. Justify expenditure on advertisement: Expenditure on advertisement is justified if it
produces the desire result. Measuring advertising effectiveness ensure that revenue
exceed advertisement costs. The huge expenditure on advertisement is, thus justified
by measuring its effectiveness.
3. Selection of advertising media: Companies have to choose amongst wide variety of
advertising media for advertising their products. Measuring effectiveness of each
medium helps in choosing the most effective medium that will help in achieving
advertising objectives.

4. Selection of right promotional tool: There are a variety of promotion tool like
advertising, personal selling and sales promotion to increase the sale. How and to
what advertising is helpful in increasing sales can be known by measuring its
effectiveness.
5. Feedback: Measuring advertising effectiveness helps to get feedback regarding
acceptability of advertisement to the consumers in terms of ad design and the product.
It helps in marking changes in the advertisement copy, (colour design, illustration
etc.) media planning or advertisement campaigning in order to achieve the objective
of advertising.
6. Strategic competitiveness: Measuring advertising effectiveness helps in designing
advertising campaign that give companies an edge over competitors. Companies can
outperform others if there work on feedback obtained from the market and have
strategic advantage over competitors.
7. Budgeting: money allocated for advertising is satisfied only if it brings the desire
benefits. This can be known by measuring the effectiveness of advertising in terms of
sales and communication targets.

Method of Evaluating Advertising Effectiveness:

The goals of advertising relate either to affecting some kind of communication
between the sponsor and the audience or to bring about desire sales. According to
Philip Kotler, advertising effectiveness is measure by examining the following:
Communication effectiveness of advertising campaign or communicationeffect research.
Sales-effect of advertising efforts or sales-effect research.
A. Communication -effect research:
The study related to communication-effect research seeks to discover if advertising
has achieved the intended communication effect. The advertising campaign is
considered successful if its achieves the communication objectives which can be to
create awareness for the brand, increase brand loyalty, change consumers attitude
towards the product etc. the exact communication effect can be measure by knowing
whether the specific objective of communication is achieved or not. If the objective is
to create brand awareness, statistical models and research method are used to
determine whether the advertisement has created brand awareness or not. This method
is also known as copy testing. The testing can be categorised into two types.
Pre-testing of advertising campaign; and
Post-testing of advertising campaign.
1. Pre-testing Ads: Advertiser pre-test the efficiency of advertisements; whether they
are seen, remember and recalled by the customer or not. Pre-testing determines the
effectiveness of advertisement campaign before its implementation.
Three major methods of ad pre-testing are;
Direct Ranking
Portfolio Test
Laboratory Test

i.

Direct Ranking: There are discussions on the validity of rankings based upon
consumer judgement. The controversy is whether or not such ranking show
substantial agreement with other measures of advertising effectiveness, especially
with actual selling efficiency. Responses reflect the opinion that ranking frequently
gives a close correlation with measurement in terms of sales. However, sometimes it
fails to do so and it is difficult to predict with certain the outcome of advertising in
specific instances.
Customer judgement can be on the basis of the following tests:
a) Memory Tests: If an individual reacts to an advertisement, it is likely that some
memory of the reaction will persist, at least for a few hours. Memory tests, therefore
provides a means for measuring advertising effect. It is possible to determine by such
tests the extent to which the message has secured attention and interest, familiarity of
public with the brand name, the slogan, current theme etc. such information may be
significant and useful, although it is not as satisfactory as a detailed picture of selling
efficiency.

I.

II.

Memory tests can be measure either recognition or recall memory. In the recognition
test, the individual is merely required to say whether he has or has not seen or heard
the advertisement or programme under investigation. In the recall test, he has to
supply some fact, such as brand name, to show that memory impression has been
made or that he remembers the advertisement.
Recognition test: The recognition memory method is usually easy, but is less reliable
since there is high possibility of confusion in this method. In recent years, recognition
tests have been conducted on a nation-wide scale by several research organisations.
The sales people present copy of the magazine containing the advertisement to an
individual and ask him if he has read it. If he has, the interviewer turns to an
advertisement and asks if it was read. The responses are carefully noted. In this
manner, the individuals reactions to advertisements are recorded. The data from many
interviewees are tabulated and estimates are made showing effectiveness in terms of
cost. The most frequent criticism of this form of recognition test is that response by
consumer may involve considerable guessing and there is likely to be a certain
amount of error, owing to the fact that people may think that they have seen
advertising when they have merely seen other similar advertisement in the series.
Though this test is based on the assumption that readers of the advertisement will buy
the product they may not necessarily buy that product. People who have not actually
even read the advertisement may say that they have read the advertisement to please
the interviewer. In spite of the difficulties, the recognition test gives useful
information, especially to the amount of attention by a campaign.
Recall Test: There are several methods of testing memory in recall test. In one of the
techniques, individuals are shown advertisement in which the brand name appears
and they are asked to tell what product is advertised. A similar method is used to test
the memorability of brand marks, packages and slogans.
This method is frequently known as aided recall test. It helps the reader to recall the
product by mentioning the specific brand. If the advertiser asks the following question
to the reader:
Do you recall seeing the advertisement of any shampoo in this magazine?
If you do, what did that advertisement mention about the LOreal shampoo?
The first question relates to unaided recall test as it mentions the product shampoo
but not the brand. The second question is the aided recall as it specifically mentions
the brand LOreal shampoo. The advantage of this approach is that guessing is

discouraged and accuracy of memory is detected. This test shows the extent to which
people from association between some features of the advertisers campaign and his
brand name. However, there is no positive relationship between the recall score and
resulting sales out of it.
b) Attention Test: Advertisers recognise that in order to present their message
effectively, they should secure the attention of people whom they wish to influence.
Measures of attention are, thus of considerable importance in judging the
effectiveness of advertisement. It is customary to measurer attention after the event, in
terms of memory. Advertisers, for example, devised a method where they could
expose advertisement to people in waiting rooms and other public places. The test was
so conducted that individuals observed did not know they were being tested. The
investigators recorded the relative amount of attention secured by various
advertisements, indicated by time spent in looking at them. For a long series of
advertisements, the advertiser was able to show close correlation between attention
and returns.
These tests are not widely used because of difficulties in their administration. The
chief advantage of these tests is that they make possible pre-testing. The chief
criticism is that measures of attention value of an advertisement are not positively
related to making a sale.
ii.

iii.

Portfolio Test: Consumers are asked to view a portfolio of ads, taking as much time
as they need. Then they are asked to recall all the ads, and their contents aided or
unaided by the interviewer. Their recall level indicated the advertisements ability to
have its message understood and remember.
Laboratory Test: In these tests, equipments are used to measure physiological
reactionheartbeat, blood pressure, perspiration to an advertisement. These tests
measure an ads attention-getting power but reveal nothing about its impacts on
beliefs, attitudes or intensions.
The advertiser creates a laboratory situation similar to that of real life like
a super-market. A simulator super market is created and the test is conducted in an
artificial environment. Rough layouts of advertisement are printed and given to a
selected group of customers to know their reaction to the product. Though response,
the laboratory conditions are not similar to actual market conditions and to that extent,
may not get the desire response from buyers.

2. Post-Testing Ads: Advertiser are also interested in finding the overall communication
impact of a complete advertising campaignwhether it has increased brand
awareness, started brand preference, etc. the advertiser draws a random sample of
consumers after the campaign to assess its communication effects. There are two
approaches for post-testing ads:
i.
Recognition Tests: These test aim at measuring the degree of memorability of
methodology used. The test begins by asking the readers whether they have seen or
read the specific issue of the magazine which carried the advertisement. The readers
are classified into three categories;
(a) Noted: Percentage of readers who have seen the advertisement.
(b) Associated: Percentage of readers who have seen and read parts of the
advertisement.

(c) Read Most: Percentage of readers who reported they had read more than 50%
of the advertisement reading matter.
The result of recognition test helps in ascertaining the extent to which
companys advertisement has made communication impact.
ii.

Recall Tests: Under the recall test, qualifying readers are shown the magazine cover
and with the help of a deck of cards bearing names of different brands, they are asked
to state which brand advertisement has been seen by the reader, and he is asked to
recall everything he can remember about each advertisement identified by him.
B. Sales-Effect Research:
Under this method, effectiveness is measured by its influence on sales. If
advertisement results in increased sales, it means it is effective. However, measuring
sales response is difficult because sales depend on many factors other than advertising
also.
The above method may give the advertiser some idea about the
effectiveness of advertisement but in actual practice, it is difficult to measure sales
effect of advertisement.
This method should be used when advertising is the major factor
contributing to sale and when sales are the immediate outcome of advertising keeping
other internal and external factors as constant.
Very few attempts are made to measure the sales effect of advertising in
any system manner. They have primarily been in the area of measuring the required
number of exposures for a campaign. Colin McDonalds study in the UK in the 1960s
is considered to be one of the pioneering works in this area. He studied the effect of
advertising on brand switching. His study led to the popular minimum two exposure
practice of campaign planning. More recently, John Phillip Jones measured the shortterm effect of advertising on purchase. He has defined the term STAS (Short Term
Advertising Strength) to conclude that ads work even with one exposure. Moreover,
campaigns which are effective in the short-run are also effective in the long-run. This
research is likely to affect the way in which advertising is planned, executed and
evaluated.

Reasons why Companies should Measure Advertising Effectiveness:

1. Avoiding Costly Mistakes: This means that companies are spending thousands if not
millions of dollars each year to advertise, but it doesnt mean that it is being spent
wisely. The only way to ensure that this money is not being wasted on ineffective
advertising programs is to continuously evaluate the effectiveness of the chosen
programs and to ensure that these programs are achieving their intended purpose.
2. Evaluating Alternative Strategies: Not only is it important to evaluate the
effectiveness of the chosen method, but also the opportunity costs of choosing that
method. Often after companies have chosen a method, they focus their attention
exclusively on that method ignoring the potential profits that would have come about
if they went with an ulterior method. A good evaluation program will be able to
analyse the effectiveness and the opportunity costs of the chosen method.
3. Increasing the Efficiency of Advertising: Often after companies choose a particular
method, they become attached to that method and lose sight of the initial goal they
were aiming for. Because the marketers know what the intended message of that

chosen program is, they expect their customers to know that message as well. A
continuous evaluation of the chosen program will ensure that the message the
consumers are receiving from this program is aligned with the message the marketer
intended to send.
Reasons why companies often DON'T measure Advertising Effectiveness:
1. Cost: the most common reason that companies provide for not measuring their
advertising effectiveness is the cost of conducting a measurement program. Often
companies believe that the money used for measuring their advertising effectiveness
can better spend on creating more advertisements or improving their product.
Although this might possibly be true, lets consider the flip side; if the company does
not measure the effectiveness of its current advertising program, they will not know if
this program reaches their desired audience, sends the desired message or meets its
intended goals. Being able to increase the advertising budget or improve the product
will not help the company if the message is sent to the wrong audience or if the
message that is comprehended by the consumers is different from the message that the
company intended to send. As a result even the slightest evaluation effort can go a
long way in ensuring that the desired message is sent to the appropriate audience and
hence saving the company thousands if not millions of dollars.
2. Research problems: As we will see in the sections to come, the evaluation process
can be very complicated, time intensive and confusing for a company that is trying to
start such an effort. In addition, it can very difficult to isolate and evaluate the effects
of only one of the companys marketing efforts; as a result managers often cannot
justify the costs if they cant pin point the contribution of each of their marketing
efforts. For example, it might be very difficult to isolate the contribution of the
companys banner ad program from their overall marketing effort as a consumer
might not necessarily make a purchase based on what they see in banner ads, but
consider a variety of factors (brand image, pervious experience with the company, or
an on TV) when making a purchase decision. However, although it might be true that
we cannot pin point the dollar contribution of one program, research can be used to
evaluate the communication, reach and other factors associated with each advertising
method.
3. Disagreements on what, when and where to test: There are a variety of methods
used when determining what, where and when to measure the effectiveness of an
advertising program. Choosing the appropriate measurement method depends largely
on the industry the firm is in, the objectives of the program based on GOPST analysis
and the person that will be analyzing the results. For example, sales managers may
want to measure the contribution of the advertising program on sales, whereas top
executives may be interested in the effects of the program on the companys image.
These differences often lead to a great deal of confusion between the mangers and
might lead them to abandon the evaluation program altogether. However, there is no
rational reason for this conflict as we will later see, each of the measurement tools
work to achieve a different objective.

Conclusion:

References:
Rajput N and Vasishth N.., Advertising & Personal Selling,
Himalaya Publishing House, New Delhi, 2011.
http://www.managementstudyguide.com/advertisingeffectiveness.htm
http://www.witiger.com/ecommerce/MeasuringMarketingEffective
ness.htm
http://www.managementstudyguide.com/advertisingeffectiveness.htm
http://www.enotesmba.com/2012/07/mba-notes-advertisementevaluation.html