Advertising research measures nine metrics: ad recall, brand lift, message clarity, purchase intent, emotional resonance, relevance, brand fit, attention grab, and attention hold.

This guide covers each metric: what it is, how it is traditionally measured, where self-report breaks down, what to measure instead, and what good looks like.

The 7 Advertising Research Metrics That Actually Matter

1. Ad Recall

What it is: Ad recall measures whether consumers remember seeing your advertisement after exposure. It is one of the most fundamental measures of whether your creative has achieved basic penetration in the consumer’s mind.

Ad recall is measured in two forms:

• Unaided recall: The consumer is asked, unprompted, to name any ads they remember seeing in a given category or time period. “Can you recall any ads you’ve seen recently for skincare products?” 

If your brand is mentioned, that’s an unaided recall. That is the gold standard because it requires the ad to have left a genuinely strong memory impression.

• Aided recall: The consumer is shown a brand name or ad description and asked whether they remember seeing that particular ad. Aided recall scores are always higher than unaided because recognition is easier than pure memory retrieval.

How to measure it: Ad recall is typically measured through a post-exposure survey, either immediately after showing the respondent an ad (for pre-campaign testing) or days after campaign exposure (for in-market measurement). The standard interval for recall measurement is 24–48 hours post-exposure. Recall that persist beyond the immediate moment is far more predictive of real-world brand memory.

Survey question examples:

• “In the past few days, have you seen or heard any advertising from [Brand]?” (unaided)
• “Do you recall seeing this advertisement?” (aided, shown the ad)

What good looks like: Recall benchmarks vary significantly by category, medium, and creative quality. For digital video ads, average aided recall typically falls between 20–40%. TV advertising for FMCG brands often targets 50–70% aided recall for high-frequency campaigns. Strong unaided recall above 15% for a single ad is considered excellent in most categories.

Why it matters: An ad that isn’t remembered cannot influence behavior. Recall is the minimum threshold your creative needs to pass. If recall is low, it signals either that the creative isn’t distinctive enough to register, the media plan isn’t generating sufficient frequency, or both. 

2. Brand Lift

What it is: Brand lift measures the change in consumer attitudes toward your brand that can be attributed to advertising exposure. It’s the metric that bridges the gap between “people saw the ad” and “people think differently about the brand.”

Brand lift is measured across several dimensions:

• Awareness lift: Did the campaign increase the proportion of the target audience who are aware of the brand?
• Favorability lift: Did it increase positive sentiment toward the brand?
• Purchase intent lift: Did it increase the stated likelihood to buy?
• Association lift: Did it strengthen the specific associations the brand wants to own for example, “innovative,” “trustworthy,” or “affordable”?

How to measure it: Brand lift requires a pre/post measurement design. You survey a representative sample of your target audience before the campaign launches (the baseline wave) and again after a defined exposure period (the post wave). The change in scores between waves, controlling for other market variables, is the lift attributable to advertising.

A cleaner alternative for digital campaigns is the exposed vs. unexposed control design: survey people who were exposed to the campaign versus a matched group who were not. The difference between groups measures the advertising’s effect without requiring a pre-campaign wave.

What good looks like: Brand lift benchmarks depend heavily on starting awareness levels. For a brand at 20% awareness, a 5-point lift (to 25%) from a single campaign is strong. For a market leader already at 80% awareness, even a 2-point lift may represent significant advertising effectiveness given the compressed headroom.

Purchase intent lift of 3–8 percentage points is generally considered meaningful for a single campaign cycle. Anything above 10 points is exceptional.

Why it matters: Brand lift is the metric that justifies brand advertising spend to finance teams. It connects the creative work to business outcomes in a way that pure media metrics cannot. If the brand lift is happening on “quality” but your strategy requires owning “value,” the campaign is working against your positioning.

3. Message Clarity

What it is: Message clarity measures whether consumers actually understood what your ad was trying to communicate. It sounds basic. It is not measured nearly often enough.

Advertising is created by people who know the brand, the product, and the brief intimately. Consumers see the ad for the first time, with no context, mid-scroll or mid-program, in a world full of competing stimuli. The message that seemed obvious in the review meeting may land as confusing, ambiguous, or simply invisible to them.

Message clarity has two components:

• Comprehension: Did the consumer understand the core message?
• Brand attribution: Did they correctly attribute the ad to your brand, rather than a competitor?

How to measure it: Message comprehension is best measured through open-ended questions rather than closed-ended rating scales. After showing a respondent an ad, ask: “In your own words, what was the main message of this advertisement?” Then analyze the responses for whether the intended message was communicated.

This qualitative approach surfaces misunderstandings that a simple “was this message clear?” rating scale would miss. A consumer who answers “very clear” to a rating question may have understood a completely different message than intended.

Brand attribution is measured by asking: “Which brand or company was this advertisement for?” without showing the brand name. Low attribution scores especially in categories with heavy competitive advertising are a warning signal that needs to be resolved before launch.

What good looks like: For message comprehension: 70%+ of respondents should be able to articulate the intended core message in their own words for a campaign to be considered clearly communicated. Below 50% is a red flag that requires creative revision.

For brand attribution in a pre-test (where the respondent has just seen the ad): 80%+ is the target. In post-campaign unaided recall scenarios, 40–60% is more typical.

Why it matters: You can have high recall and zero comprehension. Consumers remember the creative but can’t connect it to the brand or its message. This happens frequently with highly entertaining ads that prioritize memorability over communication. Message clarity ensures that the advertising is actually doing a communication job, not just an entertainment job.

4. Purchase Intent

What it is: Purchase intent measures whether exposure to an advertisement increases a consumer’s stated likelihood to buy the advertised product or service. It is the closest proxy to commercial effectiveness that advertising research can directly measure before a campaign runs.

How to measure it: Purchase intent is typically measured using a 5-point or 7-point scale:

“After seeing this advertisement, how likely are you to purchase [product] in the next [relevant time period]?”

• Definitely will buy / Very likely / Somewhat likely / Unlikely / Definitely won’t buy

The standard approach is to compare purchase intent scores between people who saw the ad and people who didn’t (in post-campaign research) or to compare intent scores for different creative executions (in pre-campaign testing).

Important nuance: Purchase intent scores in research settings systematically overstate actual purchase behavior: consumers say they’ll buy more often than they actually do. This is known as the “purchase intent inflation” effect. The metric is most useful as a comparative tool (Version A vs. Version B; pre-exposure vs. post-exposure) rather than an absolute predictor of sales volume.

What good looks like: Top-2-box purchase intent scores (combining “definitely will” and “very likely”) above 30% for a new or less-known brand are strong. For established brands with existing awareness, top-2-box intent above 40–50% from a post-exposure survey is typically excellent.

More useful than the absolute score: the uplift in purchase intent compared to a control group who didn’t see the ad. Consistent lift of 5+ percentage points indicates the ad is genuinely moving commercial intent.

Why it matters: Purchase intent directly links advertising research to business outcomes. It tells the marketing team and leadership whether the advertising investment is likely to translate into commercial return. Purchase intent gives a complete picture of whether the creative is doing its full job: being noticed, understood, and motivating.

5. Emotional Resonance

What it is: Emotional resonance measures how an advertisement makes consumers feel. It is arguably the most predictive and least consistently measured of all advertising research metrics.

Decades of behavioral research have established that emotional response to advertising is a stronger driver of effectiveness than rational message delivery alone. Ads that create strong positive emotion (warmth, joy, inspiration, pride, humor) outperform neutral or purely informational ads on almost every long-term brand-building metric. Ads that trigger negative emotion (confusion, discomfort, or irritation) can actively damage brand perception even when the factual message is sound.

Emotional resonance is not simply a likeability score. An ad can be liked without being emotionally resonant. What you’re measuring is whether the ad connects at an emotional level that creates memory, shapes perception, and motivates action.

How to measure it: Emotional resonance can be measured through several approaches, depending on the depth of insight needed:

Quantitative approach — emotion attribute ratings: Show the ad, then ask respondents to select from a list of emotions which ones, if any, the ad evoked. Include both positive (inspired, happy, trusted, nostalgic, excited) and negative (confused, bored, irritated, uncomfortable) options. Analyze the proportion of respondents selecting each emotion.

Qualitative approach — open-ended response: After showing the ad, ask: “How did this advertisement make you feel? Describe it in your own words.” This surfaces the natural vocabulary consumers use to describe emotional response, which is often more nuanced and actionable than a structured list.

AI-moderated interviews: The deepest form of emotional resonance measurement involves conversational interviews where a moderator (human or AI) probes emotional reaction in real time. Follow up on stated feelings with “tell me more about that” and “where in the ad did you feel that way?” This approach reveals the specific creative elements driving emotional response, not just the aggregate emotional tone.

What good looks like: There is no universal emotional resonance benchmark because the target emotion depends entirely on the creative strategy. A life insurance campaign targeting warmth and trust should score very differently from a sports energy drink campaign targeting excitement and intensity.

The key benchmarks to set are: (a) is the dominant emotional response aligned with the intended brand emotion and (b) are negative emotional responses below 15%? If more than 1 in 6 respondents feel negatively about the ad, that is a warning signal regardless of how the positive responses score.

Why it matters: Emotional resonance is the metric most directly connected to long-term brand building. High emotional resonance correlates with higher brand favorability, stronger brand associations, better recall and greater willingness to pay and brand loyalty. It is also the metric most sensitive to cultural context: an ad that resonates emotionally in one market can fall completely flat or cause offense in another. Measuring it before launch is essential for any brand running multi-market campaigns.

6. Relevance

What it is: Relevance measures whether consumers feel the advertisement is meant for someone like them. It’s a critical but often overlooked metric that determines whether an ad engages its intended audience or is filtered out as “not for me.”

An ad can be well-produced, clearly communicated, and emotionally resonant and still fail commercially if the target audience doesn’t see themselves in it. Relevance is the bridge between your creative and your consumer’s self-concept.

How to measure it: Relevance is typically measured with a direct question after ad exposure:

“How relevant is this advertisement to you personally?” (Very relevant / Somewhat relevant / Not very relevant / Not at all relevant)

Paired with a follow-up: “What made it feel relevant / not relevant to you?” this surfaces the specific elements of creative, casting, scenarios, or messaging that are creating or breaking the consumer’s sense of connection.

What good looks like: For a narrowly targeted campaign (a product designed for a specific demographic), relevance scores among that target group should be 60%+ top-2-box. If a campaign targeting 35–50 year old women is scoring low on relevance among that specific group, the creative is failing its brief regardless of how it scores on other metrics.

Why it matters: Relevance is the gateway metric. Before an ad can generate recall, emotional response, or purchase intent, it needs to pass the filter of “is this for me?” Low relevance scores often explain underperformance in categories where targeting looks correct on paper but the creative doesn’t actually reflect the target audience’s life, concerns, or aspirations.

7. Brand Fit

What it is: Brand fit (also called brand linkage or brand congruence) measures whether the advertisement’s tone, imagery, message, and values align with how consumers already perceive — or how the brand wants to be perceived — in the market.

This metric matters most when advertising is being used to shift or reinforce brand positioning. An ad that doesn’t fit the brand’s existing image can confuse consumers and dilute brand equity even when it’s creatively excellent.

How to measure it: Brand fit is measured by asking consumers to rate agreement with statements after ad exposure:

• “This advertisement fits with what I know about [Brand].”
• “This advertisement is consistent with how I see [Brand].”
• “After seeing this ad, my perception of [Brand] is [more positive / unchanged / less positive].”

In qualitative settings, brand fit is explored through probing questions: “Does this feel like something [Brand] would say? Why or why not?”

What good looks like: For established brands, brand fit scores of 70%+ agreement are typical targets. Low brand fit scores (below 50%) often indicate a creative direction that is pushing too far beyond the brand’s current equity — which may be intentional for a repositioning strategy, but needs to be managed carefully.

For new or challenger brands with less established positioning, low brand fit scores can actually be a positive signal — indicating that the brand is successfully claiming new territory.

Why it matters: Brand fit protects the cumulative investment in brand equity. Every ad either reinforces or erodes the brand’s position in consumers’ minds. An ad that tests brilliantly on recall, purchase intent, and emotional resonance but scores poorly on brand fit is a creative success and a strategic risk.

How These Metrics Work Together: The Advertising Research Scorecard

No single metric tells the complete story. The most useful approach is to evaluate all seven metrics together as a scorecard, understanding how each feeds the others:

A strong campaign scores well across all seven. When a campaign underperforms commercially, the scorecard tells you where the breakdown happened:

• High recall, low message clarity: the creative is noticed but not communicating
• High emotional resonance, low brand fit: great creative, wrong brand
• High relevance, low purchase intent: the right audience, wrong message
• High purchase intent, low recall: the ad works but isn’t being seen enough

How to Measure These Metrics with Merren

Merren’s Maya AI is designed to run the kind of consumer interviews and surveys that capture all of them at a fraction of traditional cost and in days rather than weeks.

For pre-launch creative testing, Maya conducts conversational interviews with your target audience, probing on message clarity, emotional resonance, relevance, and brand fit in natural language. You get verbatim responses, AI-synthesized themes, and a ready-to-download report that tells you which creative to run and what to fix.

For post-campaign measurement, Merren’s survey tools support the pre/post wave design needed to measure brand lift, ad recall, and purchase intent uplift with analysis that surfaces the “why” behind the numbers, not just the scores themselves.

The result: advertising research that actually improves your next campaign, not just reports on the last one.

See how Maya AI works →

Related reading:

• What is Advertising Research (& How to Do it Like A Pro)?
• Advertising Testing: What is It and How to Perform it Successfully?
• Advertising Research vs. Market Research: What’s the Difference?