Advertising Testing
The impact of a fantastic advertisement can be huge - a surge in sales, an increase in awareness, a change in perceptions or a boost in brand growth. But a campaign that falls flat can be devastating - both to your pocket and to your brand’s reputation and integrity.
Advertising research is about ironing out any issues - before you launch. Where might your advertising fall flat? Will your key message be misconstrued? Could it be further strengthened? It is about testing your visuals, understanding how you’re connecting with your key audience - or why you’re not. It is about gleaning valuable insight, allowing you to make game-changing tweaks before you launch. Ultimately it is about increasing the effectiveness of your ad and increasing the odds of success. That’s why we developed our innovative advertising testing tool - AdProbe.
About AdProbe
Our innovative advertising testing tool AdProbe blends both pioneering and trusted advertising metrics that can be applied from the creative development phase right through to live testing. AdProbe is exploratory, precise and eye-opening. Using key metrics gives you an exact breakdown of each element of your advert - enabling you to evaluate everything from the emotion that it elicits (a key driver for successful advertising) and the strength of its key messages to impact, memorability, overall perceptions and recall.
The aim? To provide a clear understanding of how your advertising is working, the cause of any issues and practical advice on any improvements that can be made. It is about how well your ad delivers.
AdProbe is flexible, making it perfect for all media types, including TV, radio and press, digital and online. And to enhance our advertising testing and pre-testing research service, we also provide focus groups, depth interviews and Eye-Tracking to support the creative development stage. Our advertising tracking services can evaluate any advertising campaign on an ad-hoc or ongoing basis and evaluate either your own or competitor commercials.
We appreciate that there may be times when you need a faster turnaround - a quicker, leaner approach that speeds up the research process without compromising on accuracy. That’s why we tailor our methodologies to suit your timeline and budget, giving you the perfect balance of fantastic insight and exceptional value.
Why Advertising Testing?
UK's Best Market Research Agency 2021
Advertising Testing Clients Worked With
We work with hundreds of UK and international brands. Here are a few examples of some of our advertising development and testing research:
Clean Floors
Insight into the success of the Carpet Cleaner advert
Super Thick Success
Evaluating the launch of a new product advertisement
Saving You Money
Exploring the reactions and feelings of consumers towards the advert
Eye On The Ball
Tracking to improve Customer Satisfaction Survey amongst opticians
Wheelin’ & Dealin’
Testing current adverts execution against its new execution
High Oven Pride
Brand health tracking for Oven Pride
Our Advertising Testing Approach
As an award-winning team of advertising insight specialists, you will find we are collaborative, intuitive and responsive. We bring an exciting level of expertise and energy to every project. When it comes to advertising research, knowing how to dig deeper gives you the insight you need to avoid expensive mistakes and improve the overall effectiveness of your ad campaign.
We also appreciate that it's not our place to play Creative Director. However, at the heart of our ethos is our focus on the success of our clients - so you can trust that we won’t shy away from delivering honest and informed insights either.
Our Talented Team
Types of Advertising Testing
Advertising can work in many ways, and our advertising testing usually focuses on one of three types of advertising based on the work of Seth Godin:
This type of ad focuses on creating awareness and interest in the brand. The result isn’t typically an instant sale. Instead, a business is looking for its consumers to recall their brand whilst shopping or buying later. Brand Advertising executions are slightly different as they tend to focus on telling a story about the business, product or service to generate an appealing brand proposition.
This is very much about creating an engaging call to action to elicit an immediate response - typically ending in a sale. The approach is often used by charities looking to raise money and often uses alarm or time pressures to encourage action on behalf of the viewer.
Here the aim is to build a relationship, NOT to make an immediate sale. Particularly relevant for businesses where a relationship might already exist and the focus is more on gaining repeat purchasing or greater loyalty.
Advertising Testing Product Norms
We analyse a wide range of brands Ads across various markets which help us identify drivers of a successful campaign. Accumulating all of our research findings into our AdProbe normative database, which allows you to understand how your Ad compares to others (not numbers!).
A recent analysis of our extensive brand database shows that the most powerful Ads evoke strong Emotions including enjoyment whilst watching.
Our research has shown a strong and clear relationship between several of our metrics including Impact, Action, Buzz, Emotion and Relevance.
Buzz refers to the power of advertising, going beyond entertainment but encouraging others to talk about it! We have identified this as a strong predictor of Enjoyment and overall Positive Emotion felt by the viewer towards the Ad. It is also often linked to creativity and the social appeal of advertising.
We have also seen that relevance has a very strong relationship with Impact into Action which is arguably the most important metric and it aims to assess the power of the advertising to change perceptions and behaviours in relation to the product in question!
Check out one of our AdProbe Outputs indication the Like/Dislike and interesting/boring metrics in real time.
Advertising Testing KPIs
The AdProbe approach measures a number of important Key Performance Indicators that are likely to drive the overall performance of the advertising. The main measures and factors include:
Impact
Impact is a measure of whether the Ad has the power to grab the viewers’ attention. Alongside this, we measure Ad originality and uniqueness.
Stickiness
Stickiness is a measure of Ad memorability, often driven by Relevance (of the Advert to the viewer) and Creativity.
Buzz
Buzz is a measure of the Ad’s power beyond entertainment but encouraging viewers to talk about it! It is often a reflection of the Creativity and Social Appeal of Advertising.
Fascination
Fascination identifies the key triggers of viewer Engagement by examining the keywords and ideas associated with the Advertising.
Recall
Recall is a direct reflection of a viewers ability to Recall the name and/or product being advertised spontaneously (unprompted). This measure is a facet of Stickiness.
Enjoyment
Enjoyment refers to the Enjoyment the viewer is subject to when watching the Ad. This could indicate the possible longevity of the Ad and if viewers will watch beyond the first exposure!
Emotion
Emotion is a reflection of the viewer's emotional response when watching the Ad albeit Positive (such as Joy), Negative (such as Sadness) and neutral reactions.
Action
Impact into Action is arguably the most important metric, it aims to assess the power of Advertising to change viewer perceptions and behaviours around the product/service in question.
Advertising Testing Case Studies
Want to see how our Advertising Testing tool works first hand? Have a look at some of our client success stories who have conducted a study into their advertisement and seen drastic levels of improvement.
Advertising Testimonials
I have worked with Vision One e.g. on Advertising tests and a U&A study for one of our key categories. They deliver valuable insights that lead to concrete action steps. From a focus on the UK only our collaboration has gained international scope, which the Vision One handles very well
I have thoroughly enjoyed working with Vision One. They are very helpful, knowledgeable and approachable. I would definitely recommend their services.
