Friday, February 1, 2013

Testing Ads Becomes Better, Cheaper, and Faster


For both qualitative and quantitative research purposes, testing ads has been an important staple in the diet of marketers for several decades.  Simply launching ads and seeing how well they work (or don’t work) after the fact is an undisciplined and risky approach.  Historically, that practice has resulted in countless failures in communicating messages to the general public.  Instead, market researchers have been conducting specialized research over the years to avoid the pitfalls of poor or inadvertent communications as well as to sharpen them before they are launched.

Well into the 21st century, testing ads has become part and parcel of thousands of organizations’ research agendas as they develop, test, and launch new ads that break through the clutter of an otherwise multi-sourced, multitudinous plethora of communications targeted to consumers in order to attract and consummate their business relationships.

BlogNog has now brought to market the ultimate technology for testing videos for the main purpose of informing decisions about whether, for example, a TV commercial should be launched, revised, or killed before it is aired. 

Introducing VADS (Video Analysis Decision System).  This platform enables the researcher to upload a video provided by the client organization or one that can be found anywhere on YouTube.  While the video itself can be of any length, research respondents view the video and use ARROW keys to react to the visual stimulus in terms of their relative favorability to what they are seeing millisecond-by- millisecond. 


In the past, this sort of study was conducted using expensive equipment that included individual dials attached to a large electronic console that would collect and aggregate the data.  The viewing was done in special focus group facilities that accommodated auditorium seating.  These studies were always extremely expensive, limited to a few markets around the country, and often times problematic when equipment was incorrectly set up or overly worn.

Subsequently, this technology was adapted online and has been in existence for several years.  However, the user interface has been clunky and imprecise as respondents were forced to use their mouse to move a slider found at the base of their screen.  As a result, the measurements taken lacked the calibration that matched what the respondent actually saw and did.

VADS represents a leap in technology.  Simply, it is the most precise, easy to use interface for study respondents who no longer have to keep one eye on the video and another on the slider.  Instead, they hit the UP and DOWN arrow keys while keeping their concentration on the test stimulus for its entire duration.  As a result, the researcher can zero in on the “Peaks” and “Valleys” of the line graph that represents the output of such testing and can precisely inform the client exactly what is good, bad, or otherwise about the ad before its launch.

Just like its name implies, VADS is the ultimate decision-making platform system for testing ads and other video stimuli.  As part of BlogNog, it is provided at much lower costs than any other such platform in the industry, easy to set up and use, and takes all the guesswork out of advertising and communication testing and development.