Advertising tracking studies may be conducted continuously,
with a few interviews every day, or as a series of surveys, referred to as
dipsticks (or pulsed interviews) that ‘dip’ into the market over time (e.g.,
pre- and post-advertising).
Continuous interviewing offers several advantages over
dipsticks. It provides an uninterrupted record of measurements, capturing
all trends and changes in the market with no gaps or missing time periods in
the data. Unlike dipsticks, which are often biased toward the media schedule
of a company’s own brands, continuous tracking is better suited for
monitoring competitive activity and analysing multimedia campaigns.
Continuous tracking data can also be easily integrated with
other continuous data streams such as gross rating points (GRPs) or
advertising expenditure, as well as sales data, to develop market response
models. Metrics derived from such models, like Millward Brown’s awareness
index, can provide an accurate assessment of advertising effectiveness.
To manage costs, continuous tracking is usually reported on a
4-weekly or 8-weekly rolling data basis. For example, if a sample size of
300 is required for reporting, then 75 interviews must be conducted each
week for reporting on a 4-weekly moving average basis.
On the other hand, dipsticks are like snapshots in time,
providing more accurate pre- and post-measurements for a specific
advertising campaign in a shorter time interval. Their primary advantage is
their lower cost compared to continuous tracking.
