Message and ad testing helps companies choose the messages and ads that will produce the best results. By testing communications early, companies can be more confident about their campaigns, avoid wasting money, and improve perfomance.

The most effective methods to test messages and ads use experimentation. Experiments test the effectiveness of different ads (monadic testing) or test the effectiveness of individual elements of messages (conjoint analysis).

Monadic Testing

Respondents are randomly assigned to two or more groups that are shown different messages or ads. The different groups' responses are compared to identify the best performing message or ad. We typically ask respondent how well the message resonates with them, how relevant they think it is, how well it fits with the brand's identity, and how clear it is.

Conjoint Analysis

Conjoint analysis allows us to run more complex message experiments. If we want to evaluate multiple elements of a message, conjoint analysis is the solution. We show respondents several different messages with varying elements and we ask them to select one.

Respondents go through multiple such choice tasks. When we combine the data from all respondents, we can find out how effective each element is as well as identify the most effective overall message.