Editor’s note: Reginald Collier is CEO and chairman of RSC The Quality Measurement Company, an Evansville, Ind., research firm.

Advertisers shelled out approximately $43,333 a second for TV advertising exposure at this year’s Super Bowl contest. NBC charged the princely sum of $1.3 million for each 30-second TV spot.

These prices make sense if the advertiser knows that he has a persuasive sales message which will be seen by millions of consumers all over the world who will be influenced to buy his product. Unfortunately, and the same truth applies whether the product is Pepsi Cola, AT&T or Nike, most advertisers do not have a clue whether their commercials will be sales-effective or not. When you add the cost to produce the commercial, we are talking about a marketing gamble that is staggering in size.

Decades ago merchant king John Wanamaker made the classic remark that he knew that half of his advertising was wasted but couldn’t tell which half. Today, many marketing observers say that we still wallow in this 50-50 guessing game. Some say 90 percent is wasted.

Marketing and advertising executives will often ask us what kind of TV advertising will be most effective in persuading consumers to buy their product or service. There is no hard and fast answer to this question. This is the reason why advertisers should test everything.

Our firm’s basic system, ARS or Advertising Research System, works in the following way. On a daily basis large groups of randomly selected consumers are invited to watch two TV pilot films in labs located in four different geographic locations. Within these pilot films a number of commercials are shown. Some of these are client commercials which are being tested. Before the commercials are shown the audience views different products as they might see them on store shelves. They are told that drawings will be held later which will allow them to win certain products for which they have indicated a preference.

After each show a drawing is held and the consumers are again instructed to select their products of preference in the event they win the drawing. By looking at the products the audience selected before and after seeing the commercials (before stimulus and after stimulus) we derive a persuasion score for each ad. In other words, would the audience be more likely to circle an ad for a Diet Coke after seeing a new TV ad for that product?

We feel this simple process works because it measures the message and not the media. ARS measures people’s actual behavior. Unlike focus groups and other types of surveys, we do not ask people whether they liked a certain commercial or their stated opinions regarding whether or not they might buy the product. Such research methods are all subject to bias.

After our testing, over the years, we have been able to validate our ARS test scores by matching them with actual sales results. Proof of such sales validation includes Nielsen store audits, split cable tests in electronic test markets in the 1980s and during this decade we have utilized sophisticated scanner data modeling.

What kind of TV ads sell?

At the request of several major clients we conducted a study of some 5,077 commercials which included an analysis of more than 150 different strategic and executional elements such as demonstration of the product in use, the use of humor, celebrity endorsements, a nutrition/health appeal and the utilization of four or more onscreen characters, for example.

In general, the study showed that those particular factors or elements which emphasize brand differentiation and specific product attributes are the most important reasons why a TV commercial will be successful in persuading a consumer to buy a product. The study showed that some 2,160 commercials which highlighted the strategic element "new product/new feature" achieved the highest ARS persuasion scores and another 1,964 commercials stressing the element of "brand differentiation" recorded the second-best ARS rating.

In my opinion, this major study and others which we have conducted over the years reinforce the theory of legendary Madison Avenue ad man Rosser Reeves, who wrote about the "unique selling proposition" in 1961. His simple premise was that the most persuasive ads were those which illustrate a distinct product advantage or offer a distinct consumer benefit over those of competing products.

Over the last several decades, the Reeves theory (USP) fell into gradual disuse and generic advertising became the perceived wisdom. In hundreds of today’s commercials, happy faces on young people, good times in some pleasant outdoor setting and entertainment, often provided by a celebrity endorser, seem to be the alltoooften order of the day. Critics of today’s generic TV advertising say that this kind of advertising may leave consumers with a pleasant feeling but gives them little reason to want to buy one product over another.

The key, however, is not necessarily having a unique selling proposition by itself but whether the selling proposition is meaningful. In this regard, our testing clearly shows that if the sales message is strong then you will have a far better chance of producing winning commercials. Over and over again, our research has shown that what you say is of primary importance, as opposed to how you say it.

Several years ago, another study we did indicated that a decades-old perception by advertising icon David Ogilvy was right on the money: TV commercial costs have an inverse relationship to a commercial’s sales effectiveness. On average, the more money spent on production the less persuasive the commercial. In hindsight the results of our study of some 56 TV ads showed that cluttered, over-produced commercials often get in the way of the basic sales message.

After measuring the sales effectiveness of more than 100,000 TV strategies and commercials during the past 24 years, we know that a commercial’s likability and memorability are meaningless as measures of sales effectiveness. Instead, the only criterion which should be used is the commercial’s sales effectiveness. What will it do for the client’s sales or market share?

Rational ads may be persuasive. Emotional ads can do the job. It might be a combination. Today’s Generation X consumers may be influenced by sales messages that are somewhat different than the TV ads which were persuasive for their parents. But an advertiser will never know unless they test their TV advertising concepts and finished commercials before they spend millions of dollars to produce and broadcast them.