METHODS OF MEASURING ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS - DIRECT

Advertising is aimed at improving the sales volume of a concern so its effectiveness can be evaluated by its impact on sales. Most of the managers believe that the advertisement directly affects the sales volume and hence they evaluate the effectiveness of the advertising campaign by the increase in the sales volume. There may be two types measures (i) Direct measures: and (ii) Indirect measures:-

(1) Direct Measures of Advertising Effectiveness

Under direct measures, a relationship between advertising and sales is established. A comparison of sales of two periods or two periods or two markets may be done and the corresponding changes may be noted. The following are some of the methods that are generally used in measuring that advertising effects.

(a)   Historical Sales Method Some insights into the effectiveness of past advertising may be obtained by measuring the relationship between the advertising expenditure and the total sales of the product. A multiple regression analysis of advertising expenditure and sales over several time periods may be calculated. It would show how the changes in advertising expenditure have corresponding changes in sales volume. This technique estimates the contribution that advertising has made to explaining in a co relational manner rather than a casual sales, the variation in sales over the time periods covered in the study

(b)   Experimental Control The other measure of advertising effectiveness is the method of experimental control where a casual relationship between advertising and sales is established. This method is quite expensive when related to other advertising effectiveness measures yet it is possible to isolate advertising contribution to sales. Moreover this can be done as a pre-test to aid advertising in choosing between alternative creative designs. Media schedules expenditure levels or some combination of these advertising decision areas. One experimental approach to measuring the sales effectiveness of advertising is test marketing.

• Before-after with Control Group Design This classic design uses several test and control cities in this design two types of cities are selected. Cities in which advertising campaigns are affected may be named as test cities and other cities may be called central cities. First of all, the normal sales level is calculated for both type of cities prior to advertising campaign, and then the advertising campaign is presented to the test cities and not the central cities. The effect of advertising campaign, can then, be measured by subtracting the amount of post campaign figure of sale from the pre campaign sale figures in test cities.

A Before-after with Control Group Design forMeasuring the

Effectiveness of Advertising Campaigns

	Test cities	Control cities
Pre-campaign measure of sales	Yes	Yes
Advertising campaign	Yes	No
Post-Campaign measure of Sales	Yes	Yes

The difference of post and pre campaign sales in cities is the result of advertising and all other factors that affect the sales.

• (ii) Multivariable Experimental Designs While the experimental design discussed above yields a reasonably accurate estimate of the effects of the advertising on sales, it is not successful in explaining the success or failure of the campaign itself. Multivariable designs Produce these explanations and are, therefore used by some very large firm because of their diagnostic value. The power of this multivariable factorial design is explained by G.H.Brown, former Fords Director of Marketing Research. For any single medium, eight possible geographic areas have been exposed and eight have not been exposed. Thus, in this experimental model it is possible to evaluate how each individual medium behaves alone and in all possible to evaluate how each individual medium behaves alone and in all possible combinations with other media.