Why you can’t afford to skip digital ad copy testing

The digital world moves fast, and there’s no shortage of metrics available to judge the performance of your digital ads. It can be tempting to think it’s not important to copy test your digital ads — because you just don’t have time and you’ll have plenty of metrics to look at after the ads hit the market.

But if that’s your approach, your digital ads won’t be as effective as they could be. And your digital budget won’t go as far. According to the Getting Media Right report, only 16% of digital ads are actively tested before launch, yet those that are tested outperform untested ads by 20% on average. 

So think about your goals. Ultimately you want to drive sales and/or build your brand. Before you can achieve either of those goals, you need people to:

1. See your ad

2. Recognize the ad is from your brand

You’ll learn how many people were exposed to your ad from your performance metrics, but those metrics can’t tell you whether anyone noticed it, remembered it or even realized it was for your brand. And without that, there’s little chance your ad will have a real impact on your metrics.

If you want your digital campaigns to have the intended effect, you need to find out if your audience recognizes your brand in your ads before they go live. That way, you get the opportunity to improve them in advance for maximum impact.

In this article, I’ll cover three things to keep in mind that we uncovered based on our data to help you start winning in the digital advertising space.

To start, let’s go over where our learnings came from. 

We tested over 900 TV and digital ads, tracking how respondents interacted with each ad under these circumstances: 

• TV: Respondents were shown ads in a clutter reel to simulate a real-world viewing experience. They were given the ability to skip ads and were not told to pay attention to any specific ad. 

• Digital: Respondents were shown the digital ads in a simulated Facebook feed or YouTube video experience. They could scroll through the Facebook feed where the ad would be displayed as it would normally appear. They could skip YouTube ads after five seconds. 

In all cases, after exposure, respondents were asked which brands they remembered seeing advertised. 

Now let’s get into the three key things we learned from this data.

“In today’s fast-moving digital world, performance comes from constant iteration — and that starts with testing your copy.”

— Susan Credle, Global Chief Creative Officer, FCB

In our study, we found that unaided brand recall was significantly higher for the TV ads (72%) than the digital ones (37%).

We also found that the number of people who watched the full ad was 39% higher for TV than digital. 

These findings suggest it’s easier for your brand to cut-through, be remembered and linked to your brand on TV than it is on digital. This is potentially because it’s easier for consumers to scroll away or skip the ad before they see the branding. TV viewers are a much more captive audience that is more likely to watch some or all of an ad. 

In other words, there’s a much higher potential for your audience to miss your brand in digital than on TV because they aren’t watching as long. 

We can’t assume that all digital platforms are the same. Each platform has its own nuances as audiences engage with each one differently.

By looking at the differences between Facebook and YouTube specifically, we found that brand recall was lower for Facebook (27%) than for YouTube (44%).

And we saw similar differences in how long respondents viewed the ads on either platform. In fact, the number of people who watched the full ad was 47% higher for YouTube than Facebook.  

When we think about how people engage with Facebook and YouTube, these differences make sense. YouTube users are there to watch video content, so they’re already in that mindset. And YouTube often requires users to watch a few seconds of an ad before they can skip, so there’s more time for an ad to get their attention. 

In contrast, Facebook users are scrolling through their feeds looking for something to catch their attention. They’re browsing through photos of their loved ones, wishing happy birthday to their friends, catching up with news articles, etc. It’s easy to scroll past ads without really noticing them in this environment.

Advertising is consumed in different ways across TV and digital platforms, and there are specific nuances within each digital platform. You have to consider these differences when targeting campaigns across platforms. And you can expect one piece of creative to perform very differently on TV, Facebook and YouTube. 

“Testing ad creative isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s a business imperative. If you’re not testing, you’re guessing.”

— Jenni Romaniuk, Professor of Marketing, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute

The best way to maximize your digital budget  (and make sure that people pay attention to your ad and recall your brand) is to test each ad in-context for each platform. You may find that your TV ad that tested very well just doesn’t grab attention on Facebook and is easily skipped on YouTube. In other words, TV copy testing is not a proxy for digital. 

You don’t really know how well your ads will be noticed and remembered until you test them in the context they’re actually viewed! 

There’s so many ways to consume content nowadays. And with each channel offering up different ways to view your content — and for how long — you should be taking the time to test your ads in-context to get maximum impact.  

Ultimately, what you do with the view time you have to work with really matters, which is why digital ad copy testing is key to making sure your brand is noticed and your message resonates.