Analyst Institute Expy Award · In-field ad testing (2023)

Know what works before you spend.

Creative testing helps you make investments using evidence, not just instinct. We show your actual ads to the people you need to reach and measure how they move vote choice, favorability, trust, issue support, motivation, or whatever you need to understand before you spend. The result is a media program built on what actually works.

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The Problem

Most organizations learn what failed after the spend

Creative Testing helps you understand whether an ad will persuade, motivate, or backfire before the buy goes out. We can integrate creative testing into any survey to measure movement towards your goals, looking at message effectiveness, backlash, and how people move on the issues or vote choice. With quantitative testing and open-ended responses at scale, you can see what works and what doesn't, so every dollar goes toward creative that performs.
How Creative Testing Works

From creative assets to actionable data in days.

1

We design the research

Share your creative assets and research questions. Send us the ads, mail pieces, messages, or scripts you want to test. We design the experimental structure and share a survey draft for your feedback before anything goes live. Creative testing can be incorporated into any custom polling.

2

We test the creative

Your ads, videos, audio, or static images are tested with a representative sample in your specific geography. All creative is faithfully displayed in an online survey across desktop, smartphone, and tablet.

3

Results in days

You get toplines, crosstabs, key findings, statistical analysis where required, and a briefing with your analyst.

Use Cases

What you can accomplish with Creative Testing.

For campaigns & political committees

TV, digital, and radio ad testing

Know which spot moves persuadables before your buy goes out. Test multiple versions head-to-head and see exactly which creative performs, and which backfires.

For campaigns & advocacy organizations

Mail piece testing

Narrow a large creative pool to the pieces most likely to move your audience before committing to print runs and postage.

For campaigns, political committees, and caucuses

Attack ad impact

Find out if an opponent's attack is landing before your opponent finds out. Test their creative with your voters and build a response strategy on data.

For all clients

Message testing

Test written messages, policy language, and communications before any production spend. Measure what moves people on the specific metrics that matter: vote choice, favorability, motivation, trust, and other levers specific to the issue or race.

Creative Testing Results

Creative Testing in action

See how Creative Testing helps teams make smarter decisions before committing to a media program.
Chart showing prediction accuracy in the Connecticut governor race
Connecticut governor race

Finding Video Ads to Move Voters

How Change Research helped Ned Lamont win the Connecticut governorship in a race that kept tightening to Election Day.

0.5 pts prediction accuracy
Progress Iowa
Progress Iowa

Proof, in the wild

How Change Research measured whether pro-Biden digital ads actually moved voters in the field, using a matched control district instead of a message-testing survey alone.

+8 pts favorability gap vs. matched no-ad district
View all success stories
Integrated with the Data Portal

Get your results fast

Your team gets instant access to results the moment the survey is complete, no waiting for a memo. If you're testing multiple rounds of creative through a cycle, the Data Portal lets you compare results across waves and track how your messaging is evolving.
Discover the Portal
Toplines, crosstabs, and data, all in one place.Toplines, crosstabs, and data, all in one place.
Change Research successfully predicted victory within 0.5 percentage points. Change allowed us the ability to actually show voters the videos and get their real-time feedback. In addition to the poll being increasingly time & cost efficient, the ability to test TV ads was critical.
Emily Lamont
Senior Advisor, Ned for CT
Optimized for you

Test any message, anywhere

<24 hours

Poll draft to launch

Any medium

TV, digital, mail, radio

Any audience

Testing in your geography or niche

Frequently Asked Questions

Creative Testing

What kinds of creative assets can you test?

We can test TV spots, digital video, radio scripts and audio, mail pieces, static image ads, and more. All asset types render natively in the survey, which means respondents see and hear exactly what they’d encounter in the real world, not a description of it.

Can I test multiple ads against each other?

Yes. We can test multiple ads in the same survey, either head-to-head or in combination. The experimental design is built around your specific research question, whether that’s picking a winner, understanding aggregate effect, or anything else.

What metrics does creative testing measure?

We measure the metrics that matter for your decision: vote choice, candidate favorability, issue trust, motivation to vote, attribute ratings, and more. We also measure backlash, meaning whether an ad moves people in the wrong direction.

Can creative testing be added to an existing poll?

Yes. Creative testing can run as a standalone engagement or be integrated into any custom poll. Combining creative testing with horse race and issue questions in a single survey is often the most efficient approach, since you get testing results and strategic context at the same time.

Let's get started

Talk to our team.

Tell us about the creative you're testing and the decision you're trying to make. We'll design the right experiment.

Build a winning strategy