Chapter Twelve
Assessing Ad
Message
Effectiveness
 2007 Thomson South-Western
Chapter Twelve Objectives
• Explain the rationale and importance of
message research.
• Describe the various research techniques
used to measure consumer’s recognition
and recall of advertising messages.
• Illustrate measures of physiological
arousal to advertisements.
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Chapter Twelve Objectives
• Explicate the role of persuasion
measurement, including pre- and posttesting of consumer preference.
• Explain the meaning and operation of
single-source measures of advertising
effectiveness.
• Examine some key conclusions regarding
television advertising effectiveness.
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Overview of Advertising Research
It’s not easy or inexpensive
but the value outweighs the drawbacks.
• More than 80% of advertisers and agencies
pretest television commercials before airing
them on a national basis.
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What Does Advertising Research
Involve?
Media Effectiveness (covered later)
Message Research
• To test effectiveness of messages
• Pretesting ads during developmental stages
• Posttesting to determine if messages achieve
their established objectives
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Four Stages At Which Ad Message
Research Might Be Conducted
1.
2.
3.
4.
Copy development stage
“Rough” stage
Final production stage
After the ad has been run in the media
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Industry Standards for Message Research
PACT Principles
Principle 1: provide measurements that are
relevant to the advertising objectives
Principle 2: requires agreement about how the
results will be used in advance of each
specific test
Principle 3: provides multiple measurements
because single measurements are generally
inadequate
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Industry Standards for Message Research
PACT Principles
Principle 4: based on a model of human
response to communications
Reception of a stimulus
Comprehension of the stimulus
The response of the stimulus
Principle 5: allows for consideration of
whether the advertising stimulus should be
exposed more than once
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Industry Standards for Message Research
PACT Principles
Principle 6: recognizes that a more finished
piece of copy can be evaluated more
soundly
Alternative executions be tested in the same
degree of finish
Principle 7: system provides controls to
avoid the bias normally found in the
exposure context
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Industry Standards for Message Research
PACT Principles
Principle 8: takes into account basic
considerations of sample definition
Requires that the sample be representative of
the target audience
Principle 9: can demonstrate reliability and
validity
A reliable test is one that yields
consistent results
A valid test is one that is predictive of
the marketplace performance
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What Can Be Learned from
Message Research?
• Message research is needed to diagnose
an advertisement’s prospective equityenhancing and sales-expanding potential.
• The ARF assessed which of 35 measures
best predicts the sales effectiveness of
television commercials. The only definitive
conclusion of their study is that no one
measure is universally appropriate or best.
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Quantitative Message Research
Measurement
Understanding
Control
Improvement
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Illustrative Message Research
Methods
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Measures of Recognition & Recall
Bruzzone test
Advertising Response Model (ARM)
links responses to the 27
descriptive adjectives to consumers’
attitudes toward both the ad and the
advertised brand and to purchase
interest.
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Measures of Recognition & Recall
Bruzzone test
Provides valid prediction of actual marketplace
performance along with being relatively
inexpensive
Doesn’t provide a before-the-fact indication
Tests offer important info for evaluating a
commercial’s effectiveness and whether it
should continue to run
Tests are performed online
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Measures of Recognition & Recall
Burke Day-After Recall Testing
• Used to assess the effectiveness of test
commercials and to ID strengths and
weaknesses
(1) Claimed-recall scores—indicate the
percentage of respondents who recall
seeing the ad
(2) Related-recall scores—indicate the
percentage of respondents who accurately
describe specific advertising elements
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Measures of Recognition & Recall
Burke Day-After Recall Testing
Coke execs reject recall as a valid
measure
1) Recall simply measures whether an ad
is received but not whether the message
is accepted
2) Recall is biased in favor of younger
consumers
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Measures of Recognition & Recall
Burke Day-After Recall Testing
3) Recall scores generated by ads are not
predictive of sales performance
4) Day-after recall testing is biased against certain
types of advertising content
Understate the memorability of commercials that
employ emotional or feeling-oriented themes and are
biased in favor of rational or thought-oriented
commercials
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Measures of Recognition & Recall
Measures of Physiological Arousal
• Ads that are better liked are more
likely to be remembered and to
persuade
• Efforts are now made to measure
consumer’s affective and emotional
reactions to ads
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Measures of Recognition & Recall
Measures of Physiological Arousal
• Galvanometer—measures minute levels of
perspiration in response to emotional arousal
• Pupillometric tests—measure pupil dilation
• Advertising researchers use changes in
physiological functions to indicate the actual,
unbiased amount of arousal resulting from
ads.
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Measures of Persuasion
Used when an advertiser’s
objective is to influence
consumers’ attitudes toward and
preference for the advertised
brand.
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Predictive Validity of ARS
Persuasion Scores
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Measures of Sales Response
Single-Source Systems
Gather purchase data from panels of
households using:
(1) electronic television meters
(2) optical laser scanning of universal
product codes (UPC) at retail checkout
(3) split-cable technology
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Conclusions by rsc
• Ad copy must be distinctive
• Ad weight without persuasiveness is
insufficient
• The selling power of advertising
wears out over time
• Advertising works quickly if it works at
all
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