CHAPTER 10
Measuring Advertising
Message Effectiveness
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning
All rights reserved.
PowerPoint Presentation by Charlie Cook
The University of West Alabama
Eighth Edition
Chapter Objectives
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
1. Explain the rationale and importance of message
research.
2. Describe the various research techniques used to
measure consumers’ recognition and recall of
advertising messages.
3. Illustrate measures of emotional reactions to
advertisements.
4. Explicate the role of persuasion measurement,
including pre- and post-testing of consumer
preference.
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–2
Chapter Objectives (cont’d)
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
5. Explain the meaning and operation of single-source
measures of advertising effectiveness.
6. Examine some key conclusions regarding television
advertising effectiveness.
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–3
Introduction to Advertising Research
• Measuring Message Effectiveness
 Enables management to increase advertising’s
contribution toward achieving marketing goals and
yielding a reasonable return on investment
• What Does Advertising Research Involve?
 Measures of media effectiveness
 Measures of message effectiveness (later chapters)
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–4
Introduction to Advertising Research
• Stages of Advertising Research
 Copy development stage (pretesting)
 “Rough” stage
 Final production stage
 After media run (posttesting)
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–5
Industry Standards for Message Research
Principles of the Positioning Advertising Copy Testing (PACT)
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
Principle 4
Is based on a model of human response to
communications—reception of a stimulus, comprehension of
stimulus, and response to stimulus
Principle 5
Allows for consideration of whether the advertising stimulus
should be exposed more than once
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–6
Industry Standards for Message Research
Principles of the Positioning Advertising Copy Testing (PACT)
Principle 6
Recognizes that a more finished piece of copy can be
evaluated more soundly—alternative executions must be
tested in the same degree of finish
Principle 7
System provides controls to avoid the bias normally found in
the exposure context
Principle 8
Takes into account basic considerations of sample definition
in requiring that the sample be representative of the target
audience
Principle 9
Can demonstrate consistent results (reliability) and accurately
predicts marketplace performance
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–7
What Do Brand Managers and Ad
Agencies Want to Learn from Message
Research?
• Does a particular advertisement have brand
equity-enhancing and product sales-expanding
potential?
 Brand awareness
 Brand image
• Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) Study
 Conclusion is that no one measure is universally
appropriate or best.
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–8
Message Research Methods
General Forms of
Message Research
Qualitative Message
Research
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Quantitative Message
Research
10–9
Quantitative Message Research
Measurement
Understanding
Research Method
Steps
Control
Improvement
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10–10
Market Research Measures
Measure
Recognition
and Recall
Assesses whether advertising has successfully
influenced brand awareness and influenced brandrelated thoughts and feelings
Emotional
Reaction
Provides indicators of whether advertisements
have emotionally aroused consumers.
Persuasive
Impact
Represents prebehavioral indicators of whether an
advertisement is likely to influence purchase intentions
and behavior.
Sales
Response
Determines whether an advertising campaign has
affected consumers’ purchases of an advertised brand.
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–11
Table 10.1
Illustrative Message Research Methods
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10–12
Measures of Recognition and Recall
• Starch Readership Service
 Reader awareness of magazine ads service that
examines reader awareness of ads in consumer
magazines and business publications
 Measures the primary objective of a magazine ad—to
be seen and read
 Eligible readers are classified as:

Noted

Associated

Read some

Read most
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–13
Measures of Recognition and Recall (cont’d)
• Starch Readership Service’s ADNORM index
 Used to compare an advertisement’s scores against
other ads in the same product category as well as the
same size (e.g., full page) and color classifications
(e.g., four-color ads)
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–14
Figure 10.1
Starch-Rated
Advertisement for
the Kia Sorento
• 39% noted the ad
• 37% associated it
• 27% read some copy
• 10% read most of copy
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10–15
Measures of Recognition and Recall (cont’d)
• Bruzzone Research Company (BRC)
 Conducts online testing of consumer recognition and
recall of advertisers in television commercials
 Asks subjects if they remember the advertiser’s name
when reviewing the ad with anything identifying the
brand now removed
• Advertising Response Model (ARM)
 Links responses to the 27 descriptive adjectives to
consumers’ attitudes toward both the ad and the
advertised brand and to their purchase interes
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–16
Measures of Recognition and Recall (cont’d)
• Bruzzone Test
 Provides valid prediction of actual marketplace
performance along with being relatively inexpensive
 Doesn’t provide a before-the-fact indication
 Offers important information for evaluating a
commercial’s effectiveness and whether it should
continue to run
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–17
Figure 10.2
Script for Taco Bell’s “Carne Asada Taquitos” Commercial
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10–18
Figure 10.3
Advertising Response Model (ARM) for the
“Carne Asada Taquitos” Commercial
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10–19
Figure 10.4
Key Scenes and Questions
from BRC’s Test of the
“Thanking the Troops”
Commercial
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10–20
Figure 10.5
Advertising Response Model (ARM) for
the “Thanking the Troops” Commercial
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10–21
Measures of Recognition and Recall (cont’d)
• Day-After Recall Testing
 The Ipsos-ASI Next*TV Method
1. Recruit viewers
2. Mail sample video to national sample of consumers
3. Consumers view video with embedded advertisements
4. Day after viewing, consumers are contacted to measure
their reactions to the TV program and advertisements
5. Calculation of message recall
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–22
Measures of Recognition and Recall (cont’d)
• Advantages of In-home Videotape Sampling
 In-home exposure makes it possible to measure advertising
effectiveness in a natural environment
 Possible to assess the ability of TV commercials to break
through the clutter, gain the viewer’s attention, and influence
message recallability and persuadability
 Measuring recall one day after exposure, it can determined how
well tested commercials are remembered after a delay period
 Videotape technology allows the use of representative national
sampling
 By providing several alternative measures of persuasion, the
Next*TV method allows brand managers and their ad agencies
to select the measures that best meet their specific needs
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10–23
Measures of Recognition and Recall (cont’d)
• The Recall Controversy
 Recall simply measures whether an ad is received
but not whether the message is accepted
 Recall is age-biased in favor of younger consumers
 Recall scores generated by ads are not predictive of
sales performance—scores and sales do not
increase in tandem
 Recall testing understates the memorability of
commercials that employ emotional or feelingoriented themes and is biased in favor of rational or
thought-oriented commercials
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–24
Measurement of Emotional Reactions
Measuring Consumers’
Emotional Responses
to Advertisements
Brain Imaging
(fMRI)
Self-Report Measures
(Verbal and Visual)
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Physiological Measures
(Galvanometer and
Pupillometer)
10–25
Measures of Persuasion
• ARS (Advertising Research System) Persuasion Method
 Premeasure: respondents indicate brands they would prefer to
receive if selected to win free items.
 Postmeasure: After watching a television program with an
embedded test commercial, respondents again indicate which
brands they would prefer to receive if selected in a drawing.
 The ARS Persuasion Score

The postmeasure percentage of respondents preferring the target
brand minus the premeasure percentage who prefer that brand
– Post % for target brand – Pre % for target brand

The higher the ARS Persuasion score, the greater the likelihood
that a tested commercial will produce positive sales gains when the
focal brand is advertised under real-world, in-market conditions.
© 2010 South-Western, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
10–26
Table 10.2
ARS Persuasion Scores and In-Market Results
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10–27
Measures of Sales Response
• Single-Source Systems
 Gather purchase data from panels of households and
merge them with household demographic
characteristics and with information about causal
marketing variables such as advertisements that
influence household purchases
• Data Collection Technology
 Electronic television meters
 Optical laser scanning of universal product codes
(UPC symbols)
 Split-cable technology.
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10–28
Single-Source Systems
• ACNielsen’s ScanTrack
 Panel members use handheld scanners to enter:



Coupons used
Record store deals
Record in-store features that influenced their purchasing
decisions
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10–29
Single-Source Systems
• IRI’s BehaviorScan
 Records household purchases by linking up optically
scanned purchases with ID numbers
 Collects detailed demographic information
 Measures household exposure to new television
commercials under real world test conditions


Weight tests—panel households are divided into test and
control groups
Copy tests—holds the amount of weight constant but varies
commercial content
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10–30
Some Major Conclusions about
Television Advertising
Ad copy must
be distinctive
Enhancing Brand
Performance with
Television Advertising
Ad weight without
persuasiveness
is insufficient
The selling power of
advertising wears
out over time
Advertising works
quickly if it works
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10–31
Conclusion 1—All Commercials Are Not
Created Equal: Ad Copy Must Be
Distinctive
• Commercials having strong selling propositions
are distinctive and tend to achieve higher ARS
Persuasion scores.
• Commercials for new brands tend to be most
persuasive, but commercials for established
brands can be made persuasive via brand
differentiation.
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10–32
Figure 10.6
Illustration of a
Commercial with
a Strong Selling
Proposition
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10–33
Table 10.3
BehaviorScan Tests of Advertising Effectiveness for 23
Frito-Lay Brands
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10–34
Conclusion 2—More Is Not Necessarily
Better: Weight Is Not Enough
• Ad Weight
 The frequency with which an advertisement is
repeated to the same group of panel members in an
IRI BehaviorScan test
• Conclusion:
 An ineffective ad (not distinctive or persuasive) has
no likelihood of increasing sales even if the TV ad
weight is doubled or tripled
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10–35
Table 10.4
Relations among Advertising Weight, Persuasion Scores,
and Sales
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10–36
Figure 10.7
The Role of Sales-Effective Advertising for an Undisclosed
Campbell Soup Brand
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10–37
The Relationship Between Media Weight
and Creative Content
• 47 commercials for established brands were
tested and classified as:
 Rational information
 Heuristic appeals
 Affectively based cues
• Finding:
 Increased advertising weight led to significant sales
increases in sales only for commercials using
affective cues
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10–38
Conclusion 3—All Good Things Must End:
Advertising Eventually Wears Out
• Advertising ultimately wears out and must be
refreshed to maintain or increase brand sales
• Familiar brands have been shown to wear out
more slowly than unfamiliar brands
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10–39
Conclusion 4—Don’t Be Stubborn:
Advertising Works Quickly or Not at All
• Some advertisers tend to “hang in there” and
wait for an ad to increase sales
• Most of the sales impact occurs in the first three
months of a new ad
• “Sunk costs” are an issue to consider, but if an
ad is not working at first, it probably never will
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10–40