Over the past 50 years, great progress has been made in developing print communications research techniques that help us understand the effectiveness of advertising. Thanks to the efforts of men like George Gallup, Alfred Politz and David Ogilvy, not only have sound techniques been developed, but advertisers have embraced these techniques for the purpose of improving the quality of their work.

It needs to be understood that each advertising research technique has a specific role and value. But no research methodology or combination of methodologies is capable of accurately predicting the ability of the ad to make its intended sale or behavior change.

The real world of stimulus (the ad) - response (the action of the target) is complicated to measure because human reaction isn't always predictable and because people are rarely exposed to a stimulus in a vacuum. Well-designed print research can, however, identify whether an ad has the elements that should make it effective in the marketplace as well as determine what and how it communicates.