Post-testing or tracking of ad effectiveness is commonly termed as Ad tracking. It is a streamlined process that is used in-market research to monitor performance of a brand .The brand performance covers areas like advertising awareness, product demonstration and product usage, and aims to study the attitude of customers towards the brand in contrast with that of a competing brand.

Now depending upon the frequency and pace of the purchase cycle, tracking of the product can be done continuously like conducting a some interviews on weekly basis or it can be done intermittently with interviews being conducted in widely spaced periods like three months or six months.

As a researcher is equipped with the information about the ad like when the ad was launched, what was the length of each advertising flight, how many dollars were spent on the ad-campaign, whenever and wherever the interviews are conducted, the outcomes provide an accurate and clear picture of the marketplace and the effects on the market by the marketing messages and decisions of the advertiser.

Why Ad tracking is done?

The exercise of ad tracking is generally done to provide a measure of the aggregate effect of the media weight and ad expenditure on the success of a brand amongst consumers. It also aims to estimate the effectiveness of the media buy and the quality of the advertising executions and the creativity of the designers.

Some recent forms of online ad-tracking have drawn a line between the quality issues of the creative part from that of the media. Their idea is to focus on the performance of ads as compared to the competitive ads aired by others at the same time. However it has to be noted that all the data related to ad tracking is used as an input to the Marketing Mix Models that are specially built by marketing science statisticians to estimate advertising return on investment (ROI).

The Method

Ad tracking studies can be conducted through number of media. These can be done either by calling people up or by using the Internet. Both the mediums have their own base of advertising awareness because the methods aim to tap into consumer memories differently. While an Internet interview provides visuals, a telephonic survey lacks that feature. It is very difficult to provide verbal description to the consumers; therefore telephonic ad-tracking is not as successful as the internet ad-tracking.

All in all ad-tracking is a great and efficient way to minimize advertising cost and target the consumers with a product and services that have good rapport with them, resulting in happiness in them.