Which is the better measure: ad awareness or ad recognition?

This paper discusses the various ways that have been used over the years to measure the impact advertising has on consumers, ranging from tracking peoples' awareness and/or recognition of advertising and brands, via more in-depth probes about how people feel about them, right up to the latest neuroscientific approaches being pioneered.

Which is the better measure: ad awareness or ad recognition?

Andrew GreenZenithOptimedia

BACKGROUND

Increasing advertising clutter is a worldwide phenomenon, as is massive growth in the number of brand, product and media choices available to consumers. To take just an extreme example, in the United States as much as a quarter of all daytime television content can consist of commercials or programme promotions.

The obvious difficulty for any marketer trying to get his message across in this sort of environment is that most people do most things at a relatively low-attention level. Nature, as Erik du Plessis has argued,...

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands