Role of Advertising Agencies

1. Creating an advertise on the basis of information gathered about product

2. Doing research on the company and the product and reactions of the
customers.
3. Planning for type of media to be used, when and where to be used, and for
how much time to be used.
4. Taking the feedbacks from the clients as well as the customers and then
deciding the further line of action

All companies can do this work by themselves. They can make ads, print or
advertise them on televisions or other media places; they can manage the accounts
also. Then why do they need advertising agencies? The reasons behind hiring the
advertising agencies by the companies are:

▪ The agencies are expert in this field. They have a team of different people
for different functions like copywriters, art directors, planners, etc.
▪ The agencies make optimum use of these people, their experience and their
knowledge.
▪ They work with an objective and are very professionals.
▪ Hiring them leads in saving the costs up to some extent.

There are basically 5 types of advertising agencies.

1. Full service Agencies

▪ Large size agencies.
▪ Deals with all stages of advertisement.
▪ Different expert people for different departments.
▪ Starts work from gathering data and analyzing and ends on payment
of bills to the media people.
2. Interactive Agencies
▪ Modernized modes of communication are used.
▪ Uses online advertisements, sending personal messages on mobile
phones, etc.
▪ The ads produced are very interactive, having very new concepts, and
very innovative.
3. Creative Boutiques
▪ Very creative and innovative ads.
▪ No other function is performed other than creating actual ads.
 ▪ Small sized agencies with their own copywriters, directors, and
creative people.
4. Media Buying Agencies
▪ Buys place for advertise and sells it to the advertisers.
▪ Sells time in which advertisement will be placed.
▪ Schedules slots at different television channels and radio stations.
▪ Finally supervises or checks whether the ad has been telecasted at
opted time and place or not.
5. In-House Agencies
▪ As good as the full service agencies.
▪ Big organization prefers these type of agencies which are in built and
work only for them.
▪ These agencies work as per the requirements of the organizations.

There are some specialized agencies which work for some special advertisements.
These types of agencies need people of special knowledge in that field. For
example, advertisements showing social messages, finance advertisements,
medicine related ads, etc.

Measuring Advertising Effectiveness

The managerial responsibility in the area of advertising does not come to
an end with the execution of an advertising programme. Any sound managerial
effort is finally interested in goal attainment and, therefore, always ready to
evaluate the results.

Evaluation of advertising or advertising effectiveness refers to the managerial

exercise aimed at relating the advertising results to the established standard of
performance and objectives so as to assess the real value of the advertising
performance.

This evolution exercise is also known as advertising research. It is an attempt to

know whether the message designed properly has reached the greatest number of
prospects at the least practical cost.

It is an attempt to measure whether the time, talent and the treasure invested in the
creative activity has resulted in attaining the goals of profit maximization to the
advertiser and satisfaction to the consumers at large.
What is to be measured?
It is quite obvious that in the area of ad effectiveness evaluation, the advertiser is to
measure the ad effectiveness.

However, it is not clear as to what is ‘ad effectiveness’?

Ad effectiveness evaluation is a research activity and by its very nature, it is to

establish the cause and effect relation between the efforts and the results. This ad
effectiveness is to be seen in five areas namely, markets, motives, messages, media
and overall results.

ADVERTISEMENTS:

In each area, one is to look in for the advertising ability and the achievements in
the light of preset objectives. Advertising testing is indispensable because, it
enables to get down to the facts, to decide on spending to guard against the
mistaken notion that you have to keep in touch with latest trends, to separate wheat
from the chaff, the sheep from goats, the winning ideas from the duds, to multiply
the results from the rupee investments so made.

When to test?
Testing of ad effectiveness is possible at any stage of advertising process. It can be
done before the advertising campaign begins or during its run or after the campaign
is fully run. Pre-testing gives the maximum safety as much is not lost; concurrent
testing makes him to lose little more as the advertising process has advanced.

Post-testing results in maximum loss if it fails as the whole show is over and he
gets the post- mortem report, as to what has happened. Nothing is certain unless
and until, we are sure about the accuracy and reliability of feed-back that the
advertiser gets from such research.

How to test?
Fortunately, the advertising has wide range of testing techniques or the methods to
choose for evaluation purpose. What methods or techniques he is going to use is
dependent on when he is going to measure the ad effectiveness.

I. Pre-testing methods:
1. Check-list test:
A check-list is a list of good qualities to be possessed by an effective
advertisement. A typical check- list provides rating scale or basis for ranking the
ads in terms of the characteristics.
These characteristics may be honesty, attention getting, readability, reliability,
convincing ability, selling ability and the like. The ad that gets highest score is
considered as the best.

2. Opinion test:
Opinion test or consumer jury test is one that obtains the preference of a sample
group of typical prospective consumers of the product or the service for an ad or
part of it. The members of the jury rate the ads as to their head-lines, themes,
illustrations, slogans, by direct comparison.

3. Dummy magazine and port-folio test:

Dummy magazines are used to pre-test the ads under conditions of approximation
resembling normal exposure. A dummy magazine contains standard editorial
material, control ads that have been already tested and the ads to be tested. The
sample households receive these magazines and the interviews are conducted to
determine recall scores.

Port-folio test is like that of dummy magazine test except that the test ads are
placed in a folder that contains control ads. The respondents are given these folders
for their reading and reactions. The test scores are determined in the interview. The
ad with highest score is taken as the best.

4. Inquiry test:
It involves running two or more ads on a limited scale to determine which is most
effective in terms of maximum inquiries for the offers made. These inquiry tests
are used exclusively to test copy appeals, copies, illustrations, and other
components.

Any of these elements may be checked. The point that is to be checked is changed
and all other components are unaltered, to get the score.

5. Mechanical tests:
These mechanical tests are objective in nature unlike the one already explained.
These help in provide good measures as to how respondent are eyes and emotions
reaching a given advertisement.
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