At a glance
- Marketers spend more than $500 billion (approximately £380 billion) on advertising globally, so pre-launch testing is vital to protect that investment.
- Test multiple stimuli in each round using a monadic or sequential monadic design, and score outcomes with Top 2 Box scoring.
- Track metrics like appeal, believability and purchase intent consistently so ad comparisons stay fair.
- SurveyMonkey LaunchPad helps you design, launch and analyse ad tests.
How confident are you in your advertisement? Whether your goal is to boost sales or raise brand awareness, you need to know your ad will deliver. The best way to gain that confidence is by ensuring your ad is thoroughly tested.
Ad testing is the process of showing different ads to a sample of your target audience and asking for feedback. You can run ad tests on an entire ad or on specific aspects of it. You can also get feedback on anything from how much the ad stands out to how believable your audience finds it.
Try Ad Testing from SurveyMonkey LaunchPad
Test ad creative with your target audience and get automated scorecards without building the analysis by hand.
Why ad testing matters
The amount that brands spend on ads is astronomically high: more than $500 billion (approximately £380 billion) is spent on ads worldwide, and that figure keeps growing.
Brands invest at this level because advertising delivers results. For instance, consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands see strong returns on ads across different media. The likelihood of achieving a positive return increases with pre-launch testing, which serves to identify the most effective ad concept.
Measuring advertising effectiveness through testing offers four additional benefits:
- It gives you data to back up your decisions. Hard evidence is difficult to dispute. When you can demonstrate which ad concepts are best, persuading colleagues to support the winning options becomes much easier.
- It provides ideas for further improvement. Your winning ad might not be perfect. For example, let’s say you’re focused on copy testing. Your audience likes the winner, but they don’t find its message completely believable. This input gives you a chance to take already likeable copy and make it even better!
- It helps you understand and segment different audiences. When you receive your responses, you can filter them to see how different groups (for example, men and women) react to each advert. These insights help you tailor ads to specific groups or create a single advert that combines elements that each group favours.
- It helps your organisation iterate quickly. This is a key aspect of agile market research, which is a research approach that relies on frequent rounds of data collection to address your organisation’s needs over time. Agile research helps your team make better decisions more often and reduces reliance on external agencies or consultancies.
How to run an ad test
Now that you know why assessing advertising effectiveness is so important, you’re ready to dive into the process of testing your ads. Here are the four key steps you’ll need to follow:
1. Determine the stimuli to test
Your stimuli could be videos, images, copy, audio or any combination of these. When choosing the format, consider the platform where each ad will appear. For example, you might design a LinkedIn ad for professionals differently from a Facebook or Google search ad.
Use at least three stimuli per test to get a fair understanding of your target audience's preferences. The exact number also depends on your survey design: monadic or sequential monadic.
| Survey design | How it works | Trade-off |
| Monadic | Each respondent sees and rates only one stimulus; results are compared across separate respondent groups afterward | Lets you ask more questions per stimulus and keeps each survey short, but needs a larger total audience, which can get costly |
| Sequential monadic | Each respondent sees two or more stimuli and answers the same questions on each | Needs a smaller total audience, which is more cost-effective, but limits how many questions you can ask per stimulus to keep the survey a manageable length |
If you prefer a monadic design, stick to testing just a few stimuli. With a sequential monadic design, you can test more options with ease. Find out more about the advantages and disadvantages of each approach and how to implement them.
2. Pick the metrics you want to measure
What makes one ad better than another? The metrics you measure help you decide. Consider these top ad metrics:
- Appeal: Are your ad’s visuals and message attractive?
- Believability: Does your ad’s message seem credible?
- Purchase intent: Will your ad motivate people to buy what it’s selling?
- Relevance: Does the ad address your audience’s needs and wants?
- Uniqueness: Is your ad different from others?
The most important metric depends on your goal. If your top priority is influencing sales, purchase intent may matter most. If brand differentiation is the focus, uniqueness may take priority instead.
You can measure any metric using a Likert scale question, asking “How (metric) is the ad?” with responses ranging from “Extremely (metric)” to “Not at all (metric)”. For believability, for example, the question would be:
How believable is the ad?
- Extremely believable
- Very believable
- Somewhat believable
- Not very believable
- Not at all believable
Your ad testing survey should also include screener, category and demographic questions. Discover more about each type in the comprehensive concept testing guide.
Need help from market research professionals? Want to sharpen your skills?
These resources could be exactly what you need!
Ultimate guide to running market research: This resource covers everything you need, from planning your study to putting insights into action.
Ad testing survey template: This expert-certified template is great for sparking ideas for your questions. You can use and edit it in any way you like.
SurveyMonkey Audience: Our global consumer panel enables you to survey people in over 130 countries.
Market research services: From survey consultation to team training sessions, our experts will make sure your research using SurveyMonkey Audience goes smoothly.
3. Send your survey to your target audience
You can only assess the quality of your ads once your target audience has reviewed them. Identify your target profile and invite them to share feedback in one of two ways:
- A focus group is great for gathering in-depth feedback on a range of questions, but these sessions can be expensive to run, and you probably won’t get responses from a fully representative sample of your eventual audience.
- SurveyMonkey Audience, our market research panel, lets you choose exactly who to target and how many people to survey, delivering feedback in minutes. This approach is more cost-effective than a focus group, allowing you to reach a wider audience for less, though the feedback may not be as detailed.
4. Analyse your results with a scorecard and word clouds
Once you’ve collected responses, compare the ads to each other. To focus on the most meaningful data and keep your analysis simple, use Top 2 Box scores: this involves combining the two highest positive responses for each metric into a single percentage. For example, if 30% of respondents say an ad is extremely believable and 20% say it’s very believable, your Top 2 Box score is 50%.
Compare an ad's Top 2 Box scores across every metric against the other ads you tested. In one illustrative example, Ad B wins on purchase intent and appeal while Ad A wins on believability; assuming each metric matters equally, Ad B would be the pick over Ad A. This is the kind of side-by-side scorecard result this method is designed to produce once your own responses come in.
Don't skip your open-ended questions (the ones without preset answer choices). A word cloud can help you quickly spot the key takeaways on each ad.
For a more detailed walkthrough of each step, read the ultimate guide to concept testing.
You can also try in-market testing, where you launch your ads live and use A/B testing to measure their performance, showing each ad to a percentage of your actual audience.
In-market testing tells you how people actually respond, but it's riskier and costlier since some concepts may perform poorly live.
The best approach combines both methods: test your ads before launch, then A/B test your shortlist of winners to see how each one performs in the real world.
How ad tests evolve throughout the different phases of the product life cycle
While your product is still in development, your focus may be on other testing priorities, such as name testing or logo testing.
Start ad testing as soon as your product launches. At this early stage, your audience will be seeing your adverts for the first time, so focus on broad, directional feedback and identify which messages are landing well before progressing further.
As your product matures, your approach to testing should become more targeted. During the maturity phase, you might compare different image concepts for your advert. By the time you reach the saturation phase, your focus could be as refined as testing only the colours of the image you already plan to use.
Running multiple ad tests throughout the product life cycle is based on agile market research – a method that relies on frequent rounds of data collection to meet your organisation’s evolving needs. It’s a manageable process that enables your team to make better decisions more regularly.
Best practices for ad testing
Keep these five key points in mind as you start your testing:
- Keep the metrics consistent across your ads. Ask the same set of questions for each ad to ensure fair comparisons.
- Use high-quality visuals. Blurry videos or images make it harder for respondents to give feedback and can negatively impact how your brand is seen.
- Survey a statistically significant number of people. If it’s challenging to reach enough of your target audience, use a research panel.
- Track the number of questions you ask. Limit any ad testing survey to 30 questions. Exceeding this makes it more likely that respondents will rush through without much thought or drop out altogether.
- Benchmark your results. Assess an ad’s effectiveness more accurately by comparing it to your competitors’ ads or ones you’ve used before. Include rival ads and your own previous ads in the survey to see how they measure up.
Frequently asked questions about ad testing
- What is ad testing?
- What are ad tests used for?
- What's the difference between testing advertising before launch and A/B testing?
- What does ad testing research typically measure?
Start performing ad testing with SurveyMonkey LaunchPad
You've learned why ad testing matters, how to run your own test and how to keep your results reliable.
SurveyMonkey provides a variety of market research solutions, from DIY surveys to fully managed studies.
Ad Testing from SurveyMonkey LaunchPad takes care of survey design and analysis for you, so you can have peace of mind knowing the days of launching high-risk ads are behind you.
If you’d prefer to leave the hard work to someone else, SurveyMonkey Market Research Services can design, field and analyse a bespoke study for you, from creating the questionnaire to delivering the final report.
Start performing ad testing with SurveyMonkey expert solutions today
Discover more resources
Solutions for your role
SurveyMonkey can help you do your job better. Discover how to make a bigger impact with winning strategies, products, experiences and more.
Concept testing ultimate guide
Find out how to plan, design, send, and analyze your own concept testing survey. Read our comprehensive guide on concept testing to learn everything you need to know to bootstrap your own concept testing program, with methods for everything from ad and logo testing to product and packaging design. Validate your gut instincts and sort great ideas from good ones.
See how the Western Australian Police Union uses data to power reform
Discover how the Western Australian Police Union uses SurveyMonkey insights to protect the rights, interests, and welfare of its members.
How to Develop Market Positioning That Sets You Apart
Market positioning helps businesses to differentiate themselves and attract the right audience. Discover its types and steps to take to build a strong presence.