Many advertisers believe that, if only they had more money to invest in their ad campaign, the brand would do better – experiencing gains in awareness and trial, increasing market share and building overall sales.

However, the odds are pretty good that if all you do is increase your ad budget, what you'll have to show for it is a significant decline in the ROI of your advertising. This is true whether you increase your budget in a heavy weight test market scenario or on a national basis.

Let's examine the assumptions underlying the desire to increase the size of the ad budget. If you run a test in which you increase the ad budget by 50%, you cannot expect anywhere near a 50% increase in either advertising awareness or impact on the brand. Communicus has found that increased spending on existing creative is generally not as profitable as either increasing pool size or expanding the media utilized within a campaign.

To expect a positive return on an incremental media investment, the additional dollars would have to result in either:

1. Expanded campaign awareness, or
2. Stronger behavioral change among those who've seen the campaign (because they've seen it more often)

Of course, it would be great if you accomplished both A and B.

Starting with A, we know that the law of diminishing returns is very much in play when it comes to the effect of overall campaign spending on campaign awareness. The typical $10mm multimedia consumer-targeted ad campaign achieves between 35% and 40% branded campaign awareness. Double your spending, to $20mm, and – if your campaign is 'typical' – you won't even come close to doubling your campaign awareness. Rather, you can expect an increase of about 21% to about 45% in branded campaign awareness.

As for individual ad executions, Communicus research finds that doubling the weight - or exposure opportunities – against a particular piece of creative cannot be expected to produce anywhere near double the awareness unless your base spending level is extremely low. In fact, the greatest gains in awareness for ads in any medium occur very early. This is because most consumers make an unconscious decision as to whether your commercial or ad is going to engage them the first, second or maybe third time they see it. What this means is that, while 200 TRP's spent against a commercial may produce twice the results of 100 TRP's, 400 TRP's will almost never produce twice the results of 200 TRP's.

So in terms of 'A' – expanding campaign awareness – any increase in media weight that simply involves creative that already (e.g., in 'control' markets) will have reasonable exposure levels is unlikely to show much incremental awareness under a heavier weight scenario.

That leaves 'B' – strengthening behavioral impact among those who've seen the campaign. This can work – we know that individual ad executions continue to produce persuasive impact for a significant time after they've plateaued in awareness.

However, we also know that – all else being equal – consumers are more persuaded by seeing multiple executions within a campaign than they are by seeing the same executions over and over – and over again. So your best shot at strengthening the persuasive impact of your campaign isn't necessarily to increase the frequency of exposures of individual commercials within the pool.

In fact, Communicus research strongly points to a better way to both A) expand campaign awareness, and B) strengthen the behavioral change among those who've seen the campaign:

Don't just spend more money against the same ads, run more ads with that additional money.

Expanding your pool size in TV or adding a new medium to your TV or multimedia campaign gives you a far better chance of seeing a significant bump in sales than does just spending more money.

If you don't get a positive result? You most likely have creative issues. Did you copytest that creative? Are you sure that it doesn't suffer from low intrusiveness, weak brand ID, communications issues or motivational power?

The other clear lesson that can be gained from a study of Communicus in-market campaign tests is that:

If your campaign isn't going to work well at base levels, it isn't going to work with an increase
in media support.

So, to improve the odds of generating positive results for your media weight test:

• Make sure your campaign is effective before increasing the spending behind it
• Don't just add more spending against creative that's probably already plateaued – add new creative in either the same or different media

If a realistic goal is coupled with new executions or a multi-media strategy, increasing your ad spending can deliver value for a brand. Invested wisely, those incremental dollars have the potential to change both perceptions and behaviors among the consumers you would most like to reach. Unfortunately, simply doubling the weight behind your favorite commercial is not likely to get you there.