Adtesting is the method of showing various advertisements to a sample group representing your target audience and analyzing their feedback. This is done to help gauge the success probability of an ad or campaign.
Ad testing platforms are those that help researchers carry out the research and help marketers take action based on consumer insights from the feedback.
Table of Contents
What is Ad Testing?
Ad testing is presenting ads to a representative group of the target audience and collecting their feedback. The feedback in the form of customer responses is then analyzed to help researchers assess the effectiveness of the ad. It’s good to practice this approach before investing money and efforts in an advertisement campaign.
Ad testing is important in the current markets where brands compete for the attention of existing customers and prospects. Today, there are a plethora of tools available for ad testing. However, the traditional way of testing based on survey feedback alone won’t be enough.
You will need ad testing tools that can capture the emotions of the sample audience through facial coding and eye-tracking techniques to enhance the value of consumer insights.
Why Ad Testing Matters?
The worldwide spending on ads is more than $500 billion, and it’s growing. Brands are aggressively spending on ads because it delivers. However, the question you may have is whether the ads will give you the desired return on the investment.
With the analysis of the pre-launch testing of various types of ads, such as video, TV, print, digital, and OHH ads, you can measure the results to gauge whether the ad will bring a better return on investment or result in a loss of money.
Ad testing as a concept is not anything new. Techniques have constantly been evolving, keeping in tandem with the changes in the market, customer expectations, competition, and technology. For confidentiality, cost, and flexibility, many companies are turning to self-serve ad testing platforms. New ad testing platforms offer speed and efficiency at the best price, and their AI-enabled features help you capture and analyze various emotions from customers’ faces, eyes, voices etc.
Guidelines that can help you select the right ad-testing platform
While speed, price, and an excellent user interface are essential factors that you should look for in an ad testing platform, you must ensure that the platform has built the ad testing best practices into the tool. You must conduct sufficient diligence to understand the platform’s credentials and case studies.
The questions must be asked whether the platform offers proof that its test can predict sales results, whether it can address the markets in other countries you need to test in, and whether it can compare results against a sample of other brands’ ads.
Decisions that ad tests can drive
Before you plan ad testing, decide what decisions you want to make based on the findings. For example, a go/no go decision or analytics to guide you on content improvement. These elements will help you determine what type of pre-test is required.
A useful ad testing platform must guide you in deciding on the ad. Along with surveys, platforms come with AI algorithms to ensure clarity in analysing consumer feedback.
Technical support service
In today’s fast-paced environment, everything has tight schedules, and ad testing projects are no exception.
So, if you are testing and ad in-house using third-party tools, you may need their responsive 24/7 technical support when something goes wrong with the tool. Similarly, if you have a problem interpreting the test findings, you may want to seek help from the tool provider.
Capability to set criteria and KPIs to measure success
Impactful advertising is expected to deliver, and a good ad test must help you achieve your marketing goals – short-term sales revenue, long-term brand building, or other goals – set for a particular ad content. The objectives can differ from brand to brand, and the same brand’s goals can change over time.
Before you buy an ad testing tool, ensure that it allows you to set metrics and KPIs to measure ad effectiveness. It must be built to fulfil the objectives of each advertisement while still maintaining a standard framework across all the ad tests.
Leveraging the latest technologies
Like in any other segment, technology is making a big impact in advertising, including ad testing. A modern ad testing platform is designed to give you better insights into customer responses. To achieve this, the tool must be powered by emerging technologies like AI, NLP, ML, etc., to capture and analyze the emotions of the audience from their facial expressions and eye movements.
For example, technology-enabled ad testing tools can identify and understand human emotions from their facial and eye expressions to overcome the limitations like biased results and the inability to capture and understand emotions.
A dashboard that provides the best user experience
When you compare multiple options when planning to buy a car, you will, of course, look at its technical performance, comfort, and other factors. Similarly, dashboards that present consumer insights must be appealing to your eyes and easy to use and understand.
A tool that is clean in look, easy to use, and intuitive, is important for your team to stay engaged with the tool. The dashboards must be sharable and equally actionable, leaving no time in between for marketers to heed the call to action.
Choosing The Perfect Ad Testing Tool
These days, more people are using ad testing tools before they launch ads. While manual testing in the earlier days did not allow businesses to capture and analyze large volumes of data from various sources, platforms powered by the latest technologies will be a handy testing tool for businesses, marketers, and researchers.
