Member-only story
The Measurement of Advertising Effectiveness
In the realm of consumer behavior research, a successful advertisement must accomplish four basic tasks: 1) Exposure — the consumer must come in contact with the ad message; 2) Attention — the consumer must have thoughtful awareness and consideration of the content; 3) Interpretation — the ad must be accurately understood; and 4) Memory — the ad must be retained in memory in a manner that will allow retrieval under the proper circumstances (Hawkins & Motherbaugh, 2009). Following this model, advertising has a long history of quantifying effectiveness in relation to memory of a specific ad, advertising campaign, or advertised brand (Clark, 1990; McDaniel & Gates, 1999).
Various widely accepted theories — including Day-After Recall, the Awareness-Interest-Desire-Action (AIDA) and Defining Advertising Goals for Measured Advertising Results (DAGMAR) models — are based on the fundamental argument that an ad’s memorability (i.e., its ability to sufficiently intrude into a consumer’s consciousness) is measured by degree of recognition (Brierley, 2009; McDaniel & Gates, 1999). Specifically, the majority of the advertisement-testing measures are based on the assumption that when consumers make purchase decisions they attempt to recall advertising for brands in the relevant category, as well as other brand knowledge.
