“When a child writes the examination papers, he has to see the result come what it may be, so that he comes to know where he is wrong and where he should pay more attendance. This will help him work better in future.”

This is exactly the case of the advertisement. The work is not complete if the effectiveness of advertise is not measured. This is the only way to know how the advertisement is performing, is it reaching the targets and is the goal achieved.

It is not at all possible to measure advertisement effectiveness accurately as there are many factors like making a brand image, increasing the sales, keeping people informed about the product, introducing new product, etc, which affect the effectiveness of an advertisement.

We all know that there are some companies who advertise at very low level but still their products are a hit and some companies indulge in very heavy advertisements but they don’t get desirable results. But then, there are some traditional and modern tools to measure most of the effectiveness of an advertisement through which the advertiser can or may get more and more information about how their ads and product are performing in the market.

According to Philip Kotler and Armstrong, the Gurus Of Marketing, there are two most popular areas which need to be measured for knowing the effectiveness of advertisement and they are:

• Communication Effect
• Sales Effect

Communication Effect Research consists of three types of researches:

1. Direct Rating Method - Here, customers are directly asked to rate the advertisement and then these rating are calculated.

2. Portfolio Tests - Here, the customers see the ads and listen carefully to the ads and all the contents of the ads and then they are asked to recall the ad and the contents. Then the calculations are done with help of this data.

3. Laboratory tests - Here, the apparatus to measure the heart rates, blood pressure, perspiration, etc are used on the customer after he watches the ad, to know the physiological reactions of the body.

Sales Effect Research totally depends on the sales of the company. The sales keep varying from time to time. There are some factors affecting sales like product availability, the price of the product, contents of the product, and sometimes the competitors.

So this method is a little difficult than the communication one. The company doing sales effect research generally bothers about the sales of the product, they try to know whether or not the money they are spending on the ads is enough or excess.

As earlier said, it is not possible to measure each and everything and the chances are at the lower end if the company has many ads running through various mediums at the same time. So suggestion is that the advertiser or the company should use appropriate and different methods which are most suitable for the media under use.

• The company can hold surveys and product recognition tests
• Questionnaire or feedback flyers can be distributed and customers could be asked to fill it up.
• Toll free number can be highlighted on the ads so that customers can call up.
• The response rates can be increased by telling customers what to do. For e.g. some ads have lines in flashy color like “Hurry Up” or “No one can eat just one” or “be the first” etc.

These are the traditional ways. Now a days, internet is the modern tool for measuring the effectiveness of an advertisement. There are some types such as:

1. Integrated direct marketing - This is an internet based tool where they have a response corner designed on the websites. Whenever the customers visit the sites, they fill up their contact details and give feedbacks. Thus the company supplies more information and sends newsletters and also gets the idea for further action. But then its not that only online advertiser have this facility but then advertisers who don’t work online can use coupons, discount vouchers, etc. to do this.

2. Analysis tool - there is an analysis tool available on internet by using which the advertiser will know how many customers are visiting the site, who are shopping online, how many pages are viewed, etc. which in turn will help advertiser to measure the effectiveness.

Internet is the most easy, cheaper and cost effective way to measure the effectiveness because here no money is wasted as the ad is only viewed when the customer want to view it where as in normal print method or using TV, the ad sometimes goes unwatched or unattended and viewed for the sake of viewing.