Empirical Study on the Evaluation of the Advertising
Effectiveness
Yanfeng Xu
Glorious Sun School of Business and Management
Donghua University
Shanghai, China
xuyanfeng1980@163.com
Abstract—Evaluation of advertising effectiveness is an important
part of advertising campaign. Based on different viewpoint,
scholars put forward many evaluation models of advertising
effectiveness. Through literature review, the paper constructs
evaluation model of advertising effectiveness based on Web2.0.
An evaluation scale consisting of six evaluation factors, which are
attention, interest, information search, credibility, purchasing
behavior and information sharing is designed. Take college
students as a sample, 300 questionnaires are given out while 238
copies of the questionnaires are valid. The internal logical
relationship and operation mechanism are proved by the
structural equation modeling (SEM).
Keywords- advertising effectiveness; evaluation; SEM
I. INTRODUCTION
With the highly developed medium and market, the
effectiveness of advertising is questioned: how to evaluate the
effect of advertising and what is the key point of the
advertising effect? The evaluation of advertising effectiveness
is an important feature of modern advertisement, which means
to examine whether AD campaign achieved prospective effects
through analyzing and evaluating the process after the
implementation of activities. In accordance with the time,
evaluation of advertising effectiveness can be divided into
evaluation beforehand, evaluation in the process and evaluation
afterwards.
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
The evaluation of advertising effectiveness experienced the
following phases:
A. Phase of Psychology Research
E·St·Elmo Lweis(1989) put forward the influential
advertising psychological model of AIDA. This model put
forward that the advertisement effectiveness is not a vague
concept and it can be decomposed into different levels. We
should examine the effectiveness of an advertising activity by
measuring whether or to what extent can the advertising cause
the consumers’ attention, arousing their “interest”, stimulating
their “desire”, and changing their “action”. EdwardK·Strong˄
1925˅developed the model into AIDMA model by adding the
item of “memory” before “action”.
978-1-4244-8165-1/11/$26.00 ©2011 IEEE
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Hengbo Du
Glorious Sun School of Business and Management
Donghua University
Shanghai, China
duhengbo@163.comline
B. Phase of Communication Research
RH.collye ˄ 1961 ˅ developed the model of DAGMAR
which means defining advertising goals for measured
advertising results. This method can display the audience’s
psychological change before and after the advertising campaign
intuitively, namely, the audience experience the process of
unknown - known - understand - be convinced - action.
Robert·J·Lavidge and Gary·A·steyn(1961) put forward the
model of L&S, which is actually the refining of DAGMAR.
This mode noticed the role of emotional factors in decision-
making.
C. Phase of System Research
Lang˄1980˅put forward the model of ADSAM. Through
analysis to 232 emotional adjectives, the model explores their
relationships with attitude, cognitive, brand interest, purchase
intention, and finally formed the system based on joy– attention
value - influence. The evaluation system of AC Nielsen
conducts emulational test to target audience through a
simulated environment of advertisements, to examine the
following four aspects of advertisement: appetency, persuasion,
infectivity and communication effect. DMP mode of Dentsu
Company is an advertising testing system aided by the
computer. The advertising psychological effect is divided into
brand awareness, understanding of content, preference,
purchasing intentions. Mackenzie, Lutz and Belch (1986)
propose Dual Mediati on Model of Advertising Response.
Homer and Yoon (1992) introduces the emotion initiated by
advertising into the model and formed the integrated model. On
the basis of neural systematic, Hall (2002) put forward the
model of P/E/M, in which the effect of experience is
considered in the evaluation of the advertisement effect.
In the three stages of advertising effect evaluation, linear
model can easily and efficiently describe consumer’s
psychological process caused by advertising, but it ignores
consumer’s response and not takes the role of consumer’s
initiative demand into consideration.
III. CONSTRUCTING THE MODEL OF ADVERTISING
EFFECTIVENESS EVALUATION
In the era of advertising 2.0, Dentsu Company proposed the
mode of AISAS (Attention Interest Search Action Shared),
which is based on the network. Advertising attracts the TABLE I. SCALE OF VARIABLES
attention of the audience, the audience emerges interest, then
variable Scale
the audience searches relevant information, after adequate
understanding the audience takes action and finally shares the 1.Advertising arouse my attention
experience. Word-of-mouth Advertising can produce another
search and purchase behavior. Therefore, in the era of Attention 2. Spokesperson arouse my attention
advertising 2.0, evaluation of advertising effectiveness should 3. Advertising is unique, which arouse my attention
also consider the audience’s initiative behavior, and consider
the spread of word-of-mouth effect. Based on AISAS model, 1.Content of the advertising arouse my interest
this paper puts forward the advertisement effect model as Interest 2. Technique of the advertising arouse my interest
shown in graphic 1:
3. Spokesperson arouse my interest

1.I searched the product information in network

Attention Action Search
2.I asked my friend about the advertising product

Share 1.I get the idea of buying the advertising product

Search Action
2.I purchased the advertising product
Reliability
Interest 1. Spokesperson is highly related to product

Reliability 2.Advertising picture is reliable

GRAPHIC 1 MODEL OF ADVERTISING EFFECTIVENESS EVALUATION 3. Ad copy is reliable

1.I shared my purchasing experience with my friend

Based on the AISAS model proposed by Dentsu Company Share
,we draw the research hypothesis: 2.I announced my purchasing experience in network

Hypothesis 1 ˖ Attention is positively related to B. Implement of the Survey

information searching
The questionnaire is preliminary surveyed among 10
Hypothesis 2˖Attention is positively related to interest college students, and some data are adjusted. Thus, the
questionnaire get 15 indexes and 300 College students are
Hypothesis 3˖Interest is positively related to information selected as samples. The recovery of the questionnaire is 87%
searching and effective rate is 91.2%. This research adopts structure
equation model to analyze the relationships among various
Hypothesis 4˖Information searching is positively related
factors.
to reliability
Hypothesis 5 Information searching is positively related to V. DISCUSS OF THE RESULT
purchasing action
Firstly, Reliability Analysis of SPSS16 is used to examine
Hypothesis 6: Reliability is positively related to purchasing the reliability of the scale.All the Cronbach alpha vaule, as
action show is table 2, are greater than 0.7.According to the theory of
Nunally,the reliability of the scale is high.
Hypothesis 7 ˖ Reliability is positively related to
information sharing
TABLE II. CRONBACH ALPHA
Hypothesis 8˖Purchasing action is positively related to
information sharing Factor Cronbach alpha
Attention 0.721
IV. RESEARCH METHOD Interest 0.836
Search 0.784
A. Questionnaire Designing Action 0.873
On the basis of referencing other questionnaires, the Reliability 0.798
questionnaire of advertising effectiveness evaluation is
Search 0.854
developed. Variables are displayed as follow:
Total 0.764

Secondly, the Principle Component Analysis is used to test

the validity. Bartlett's Test of Sphericity shows the KMO is
0.813, which means that the data is appropriate for PCA. The

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factor matrix by Varimax Rotation is showed in table 3. TABLE V. RESULT OF AMOS
82.042% of the variance is explained. Standardized
Hypothesis t Conclusion
Path Coefficient
TABLE III. FACTOR MATRIX BY VARIMAX ROTATION Hypothesis 1 0.36 2.32 supported

A I S A R S Hypothesis 2 0.28 1.98 supported

Attention1 0.821
Hypothesis 3 0.45 2.18 supported
Attention2 0.843
Attention3 0.896 Hypothesis 4 0.36 3.54 supported
Interest1 0.786
Hypothesis 5 0.17 1.21 unsupported
Interest2 0.874
Interest3 0.853 Hypothesis 6 0.41 4.23 supported

Search1 0.765 Hypothesis 7 0.24 3.12 supported

Search2 0.884
Hypothesis 8 0.35 2.85 supported
Action1 0.892
Action2 0.851
VI. CONCLUSION
Reliability1 0.781
The path coefficient from attention to information searching
Reliability2 0.754 is 0.36 while the path coefficient from attention to interest is
Reliability3 0.863 0.28.They are both significant in the level of 0.01,which
Share1 0.891 suggests that attention are positively related to information
Share2 0.785
searching and interest. Attention can directly affect the
audiences’ information searching and generate interest, which
also confirms other scholar’s research, namely attention is the
Thirdly, Amos7 is used to test the hypothesis. The result of first step to success and advertising should cause audience’s
the test is showed in graphic 2. All the t values are significant attention at first.
in the level of 0.05. The path coefficient from interest to information searching
is 0.45 and is significant in the level of 0.01.It suggests that
interest is positively related to information searching and
interest can result in consumer’s further information searching.
Thus, advertising should understand the consumers’ real needs
to propagandize to specific consumer clearly.
The path coefficient from information searching to
reliability is 0.36 while the path coefficient from reliability to
purchasing action is 0.41.They are both significant in the level
of 0.05,which suggests that the audience can know more
information about the advertising by information searching and
approve the reliability. Approve to reliability can result in the
purchasing action. Therefore, advertising should improve the
GRAPHIC 2 PATH DIAGRAM OF AMOS reliability to let the audience feel genuine and believable.
The path coefficient from purchasing action to information
According to the goodness of fit showed in table 4, we can sharing is 0.35 while the path coefficient from reliability to
draw the conclusion that the Model can fit the sample data information sharing is 0.24.They are both significant in the
better. level of 0.01,which suggests that purchasing action and
approve to reliability can directly affect the information sharing
then affect other consumers’ decision-making. Therefore,
TABLE IV. GFI OF THE MODEL advertisers should make full use of the advantage of network to
Chi-square/ improve the reliability of advertising and form good reputation
Fit Index RMSEA NNFI CFI IFI SRMR
df effect.
recommen- η η
ζ3 ζ0.08 η0.90 ζ0.08
ded value 0.90 0.90 The path coefficient from information searching to
Real value 2.612 0.054 0.976 0.984 0.963 0.0321 purchasing action is not supported by the test, so it should be
deleted. It suggests that information searching can affect
purchasing action not directly but through reliability.
Finally, the standard path coefficient of the variables and
the t values show that hypothesis 1, 2, 3, 5,6,7,8 are supported,
while assumption 4 is not supported, as is showed in table 5.

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