Understanding Which Creative Drives Greater Purchase Intent
Inside the Report
+33%
Increase in purchase intent
+86
Increase in Ace Score
+119
Increase in female viewers Ace Score
An automotive services brand partnered with iSpot to evaluate and optimize its TV creative strategy. By pre-testing three distinct 30-second ads prior to launch, the brand confidently selected the highest-performing creative—driving a 33% increase in purchase intent while ensuring alignment with target audience expectations.
Challenge
When preparing to launch a new campaign, this automotive services brand faced a critical question: Which of its three newly produced 30-second TV creatives would deliver the greatest impact with audiences? Answering this would help the brand avoid spending on an underperforming ad. For each of the three ads, the brand wanted to evaluate which creative elements resonated most, emotional impact, message clarity, and performance among its target demographic.
Solution
To measure ad effectiveness, the brand used iSpot Creative Assessment—a media-agnostic solution with a U.S. Census–weighted panel—delivering emotional and brand recognition insights. The entire process delivered actionable insights within 24 hours, providing a fast, comprehensive view of performance across all three creatives.
Additionally, the brand accessed iSpot’s “always-on” benchmarking, comparing its creatives against a full year of 30-second ads in the automotive services category. iSpot’s proprietary Ace Score provided an overarching performance index, supported by deeper metrics such as purchase intent, emotional resonance, and demographic segmentation.
Results
One creative emerged as the clear frontrunner—outperforming its counterparts by +86 points on the Ace Score and delivering a 64% purchase intent rate, compared to a category norm of 48%. It particularly resonated with female viewers, earning a +119 point Ace Score gap-to-norm in that segment. Emotional sentiment also stood out, with viewers saying the creative “got their attention,” “felt relatable,” and was something they’d “watch again.”
Although all three ads performed above the norm, the brand confidently prioritized the highest-scoring creative—ensuring better ROI, stronger alignment with audience expectations, and reduced media waste.