Ad clicks don't correlate with important measures of long-term success.
Click-through rates usually correlate well with on-line sales in the short-term. However, if you want to evaluate off-line effectiveness of ads longer-term, clicks are not the right measure.
Facebook* has shown that ads with high click-through don't correlate with off-line success. Nieslen concluded that ads with high click-through rates don't correlate with off-line sales, ad recall, brand awareness, or purchase interest.
In order to gauge off-line effectiveness, you need to evaluate how well an ad breaks through the clutter to leave a motivating message with your target audience.
Effective ads help build a brand over time, by creating awareness and interest among target consumers. Brand Chek advertising testing evaluates four key effectiveness measures:
Media context is key to ad testing, as the ability to break through the clutter varies widely by medium. Brand Chek provides ad testing in media context: