How Do They Measure Advertising?

The purpose of advertising may differ from media to media, application to application, business to business. But no matter how it is used, there is only one major purpose to advertising – and that is to inform and move people to respond to it. Advertisements can be seen anywhere, it is on billboards, on TV, radio, magazines, newspapers, on the internet, mobile phones, buses and even on grocery carts. The advertising spending of corporations and mammoth brands has increased significantly over the last few years. In 2006, the international ad spending reached $385 billion. How does advertising become so effective? How do they measure advertising as an effective marketing activity?Tracking the performance and effectiveness of an advertisement is usually done after the implementation of the campaign. This is often called post testing or advertisement tracking. The activities usually range from product testing or usage, ad awareness, brand awareness, attitude reviews and continuous long term researches that help monitor the performance of a product or service. The duration of the activities vary. There are those that are implemented frequently, while there are tracking activities held every few weeks, months or quarters. Measuring advertising may be conducted by the business entity concerned, or by a private company usually in the form of market research agencies.While it is clear that advertisement campaigns are made to move people according to the information presented, be it buying a certain idea or product, promote awareness or respond by inquiry, there are different reasons why advertising is measured. There are efforts meant to track the effect of an ad execution. These, practically, tests whether the concept behind the advertisement results to positive response. The second purpose is to measure how wide the ad has reached in terms of market targeting. Of course, the bigger the chunk of the market the campaign was able to capture, the more effective the implementation has been. Thirdly, measuring ad effectiveness may also mean measuring the cost effectiveness. After major tracking activities are done, companies will be able to see if they had spent the right amount of resources: ideas, materials, man power, money and machine to their advertising campaign.In-house or agent, the persons responsible for measuring the ad effectiveness are usually called researchers. These people do not just merely go out in the streets and interview people without the proper data at hand. Before measuring begins, researchers must be able to obtain data such as the duration of the advertising campaign. Questions like when the campaign started, how long has it been running and when it will end should be answered. Second, the researchers must know the volume of resources spent for the ad project. And they should also know the right time to interview consumers. Advertising tracking for a business is a like an advertising mirror, that is why proper timing must be observed so as not spoil the message of the ad.There are three ways that researchers track ad performance – recognition measure, aided awareness measure and unaided awareness measure. These methods only differ in the type of questions used. The first only requires a question like “do you know this ad”. The second asks consumers if they know a sponsor of the ad. And the third helps interviewees answer the question by choosing from a list, that is why it is called aided awareness. But despite the effortless approach of these methods, it is clear that no one can effectively measure advertising without the required information. So, before conducting a survey, make sure to gather all the necessary data.