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Ameritest® Japan Frequently Asked Questions
The Report
27. What are the key measures of advertising performance?
28. How do I know if numerical differences are statistically significant?
29. What kinds of norms or benchmarks does Ameritest® have?
30. What is a communication strategy?
31. What kind of diagnostic information is provided?
32. How do I read Ameritest® Flow of Attention® graph?
33. What should I be looking for in the Flow of Attention® graph?
34. What's the difference between the Flow of Attention® and the Flow of Emotion® ?
35. What should I be looking for in the Flow of Emotion® graph?
Q.26 What is the Topline?
A.26 The topline is the first page of commercial performance measures that you will find in an Ameritest ®report. This page summarizes all the key measures of short term performance:
Attention, Brand Linkage, Communication and Motivation. In a sense, this is the bottom line or report card part of the report.
Q.27 What are the key measures of advertising performance?
A.27 Attention is a measure of how large an audience your commercial will capture. Brand Linkage is a measure of how aware the audience is of who is sending them a message. Communication is a measure of how well the commercial conveys your intended message. Motivation is a measure of audience response to that message.
Q.28 How do I know if numerical differences are statistically significant?
A.28 Differences between numbers that are being compared can be calculated at the 90% level of statistical confidence and denoted with letter codes next to the numbers. The letter refers to the column of data to which a particular number is being compared.
Q.29 What kinds of norms or benchmarks does Ameritest® have?
A.29 Ameritest ®has norms and benchmarks in Japan for packaged goods and several specific categories. We have tested close to 200 ads in this market.
Q.30 What is a communication strategy?
A.30 A communication strategy is a document that is constructed through client and agency dialogue to represent the most precise statement of the messages the advertising is intended to convey. This document is provided to Ameritest ®as a guide for coding the open-ended remarks made by respondents in the communications part of the test.
Q.31 What kind of diagnostic information is provided?
A.31 There are fundamentally three different types of diagnostic information provided in the Ameritest ®report. The first kind of information is coded verbatim (that is, answers in respondents' own words) given in response to open-ended questions, such as "As you watched this commercial, what thoughts or ideas went through your mind?" The second kind of information is collected in the form of ratings, for statements such as "Overall, how would you rate the commercial you just saw in terms of believability?" These statements are designed to help respondents better articulate their thoughts and feelings toward the advertising based on similar comments made by respondents over the course of many years of copytesting.
The first and second types of diagnostic information are verbal. The third type of information is non-verbal. This is the unique component of Ameritest® provided by the Ameritest Picture SortsR methodology. The Picture SortsR are designed to measure on a micro level the same things we want to know about the performance of the commercial as a whole?namely, what images do viewers pay attention to and what is their emotional
response to the images in the commercial.
The Ameritest ®advertising model, which is shown in the methods section of an Ameritest ®report, provides a road map for understanding how the different pieces of diagnostic information fit together to explain the overall performance of a commercial.
Q.32 How do I read an Ameritest ®Flow of Attention® graph?
A.32 Think of an Ameritest ®Flow Graph as a graphical user interface for your research data. It is designed to help you intuitively see how the audience is responding to your commercial as a piece of film.
The pictures in the graph, which are taken from the commercial, are arranged on the graph in the order in which they actually occur in the commercial. The height of each picture, measured from the top of the picture, represents the percentage of respondents who remember seeing that image in the commercial. Across all the television commercial tests Ameritest® has done we have found that, on average, respondents typically remember about two out of three images in the commercial. Hence, the variability in the height of different pictures on the graph actually shows the process of selective perception in action as the intelligent eye of the viewer actively sorts through the visual information present in the commercial.
Q.33 What should I be looking for in the Flow of Attention® graph?
A.33 In general, we are analyzing the shape and visual content of the attention curve. Typically the following factors are considered:
- What is happening during the opening few seconds of the commercial? Does the height of these pictures indicate that the commercial is drawing viewer interest into the ad?i.e., does the salesman have his foot in the door?or is the commercial slow to engage viewer interest.
- Is the overall trend line of the curve from beginning to end rising or falling? This is an indication of whether or not the commercial builds viewer involvement over time or loses it.
- What are the best recalled images or focal points of the commercial? Are these images relevant to the communication goals of the advertising, e.g., the brand name?or possibly distracting executional elements.
- How smooth or well connected is the flow from one image to the next? Abrupt discontinuities in the flow indicate moments in the film when viewer attention got off track or wandered from the sequence of ideas that you intended.
Finally, it should be noted that we don't expect all the images to be equally well recalled. To build visual peaks of interest it is necessary to have valleys of transition. A misuse of the picture sort would be to mechanically decide to edit out of the commercial all of the low images on the graph.
Q.34 What's the difference between the Flow of Attention® and the Flow of Emotion ®?
A.34 The Flow of Attention® is a measure of cognitive processing. It relates primarily to measures of attention and memorability?specifically, it is a diagnostic for the Attention and Brand Linkage Score.
The Flow of EmotionR is a measure of affective response. It relates to the visual drama being created by the ad and is a primary diagnostic used to explain the Motivation Score.
Q.35 What should I be looking for in the Flow of Emotion ®graph?
A.35 Think of emotion as a fluid that is being pumped through the ad. The total volume of fluid?or quantity of emotion?is correlated with the Motivation Score. In other words, commercials that pump more emotion tend to be more motivating (as long as that emotion is being put to work with good brand linkage.)
Importantly, we measure negative emotions as well as positive emotions. Negative emotions may be interpreted in one of two ways. In the first case, they are simply an indicator of something in the ad that the audience didn't like or was polarizing by. In other cases, negative emotions may be deliberately evoked for a dramatic effect. In those cases, be sure that the brand gets the credit for transforming negative emotions into positive emotions by the end of the spot?and that the brand is perceived to be the hero of the spot.
Q.36 What about music?
A.36 If music is an special issue in a particular test, we provide ratings of the overall likability of the music and also provide a short battery of descriptors that can be used to describe the emotions evoked by music.
