An ad test or an advertisement test is an evaluation of your ad by consumers  to measure its potential success. An advertisement can be fully produced, in the design phase, or can be an iterative series of ads to evaluate, refine and evaluate again via testing. Whether it is a television advertisement, a radio ad or even a billboard campaign, help should be sought to ensure that it is suitable and due to succeed within its target market before the campaign is launched.

What do you need From the Ad Test?

When discussing the project with your chosen team of expert advertising evaluators, always ensure that you know exactly what it is that you require them to test for you. For example, you might wish to acquire advice from the storyboard stage of the ad development and you might wish to have them help to design the basis for the new campaign.  Some ads will be compared to other similar ones that have proven effective and will be tested for comparison.   Others that are in the latter stages of development will be shown to specific groups of people and a survey will be completed by them to provide honest opinions.  When we conduct ad testing, we work with our clients to find out what stage they’re in, what their target market is and what the goal of the campaign will be (direct response, brand awareness, contest, etc.)  Only when we have all of the data can we compile the right panel for ad test evaluation.  The resulting data is only as good as the information obtained prior to conducting the tests.

Other popular reasons for requesting an ad test is to verify with consumers that an entire series of advertisements link together well and flow correctly. If a potential customer cannot instantly link the ad with your company, brand or offer or sometimes even worse, cannot understand easily how they link, then using the ad testing data can correct these inefficiencies before it goes live on air, on TV, in print or even online.

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