The science of effective advertising
By Ben Lorkin, Senior Research Director at Day One.
At Day One, our mission is to bring together technology and human intelligence to deliver deeper, actionable insights that help our clients make better decisions.
We do a lot of communications research and with billions spent by brands each year on advertising it is important to ensure they grab attention, evoke emotions, and ultimately drive behaviour.
Yet many ads fail to make a meaningful impact. Why? Because traditional ad testing often focuses on what people say they like using stated answers and rational justifications rather exploring how they actually react and understanding what will actually motivate them.
Why emotion and behaviour matter
We’ve long understood at Day One that real impact lies beneath the surface. That’s why we integrate AI-driven attention and sentiment analysis into our research, revealing how subconscious responses shape memory retention and action—key predictors of ad effectiveness.
“Memory is the root of all advertising effectiveness. If people don’t remember your brand, they can’t buy it.”- Byron Sharp, How Brands Grow
But creating an ad that captures attention, delivers a clear message, and sparks emotion is only half the battle. The real goal? Behaviour change. This is where behavioural science comes in—because it’s not just what you say, but how you say it.
“You cannot bore people into buying your product; you can only interest them in buying it.”– David Ogilvy
The science behind effective ads
Let’s take a hypothetical ad and assume that it has already been optimised for attention and emotional impact.
Now, let’s look at the behavioural science principles at play
- Mental friction – making the brain work (just a little)
Notice the strategic use of font sizes, typographies, and upper/lower case letters. Not enough to hinder readability, but enough to make the brain work slightly harder to process the information. This “mental friction” makes the message feel more rewarding and memorable. It’s the same principle behind HelloFresh—you get more satisfaction when you create the meal yourself rather than receiving a ready-made dish.
- The generation effect – engaging the audience
Instead of stating a fact, the ad poses a question. Why? Because prompting the audience to think rather than passively consume enhances memory retention. This tactic is widely used in consumer advertising with “Do you love anyone enough to give them your last Rolo?”, “Should’ve gone to Specsavers?” and TFL’s “Would you give up your seat?” pertinent examples. And with studies showing a question can increase positively towards a brand by up to 14% it is something to think about?
- Precision = persuasion
Which sounds more credible? “Product X improves survival by 8 months.” or “Product X improves survival by 7.8 months.”. You got it, 7.8 months and that is because the precision makes the claim more distinctive and persuasive. The exact number make the claim more credible. A simple yet powerful tool.
- Tangibility – making benefits concrete
Compare these two messages. “Product X brings new frontiers.” And “Product X brings improved survival”. What is clearer? What is better understood? The later and that is because “new frontiers” is vague and open to interpretation. Sure, you can speculate what it means but what you think and what someone else thinks might be completely different. More importantly it might not be what the company behind Product X wants you to think whereas “improved survival is clear, specific, and easy to visualise. This is why Apple’s famous “1,000 songs in your pocket” tagline worked so well—it transformed an abstract concept (digital music storage) into something tangible
The future of ad effectiveness
These are just a few ways behavioural science can enhance advertising impact. As ads become more data-driven and as we deepen our understanding of human decision-making, integrating AI-led neuroscience and behavioural insights into concept testing will be essential
To find out how Day One can help your creatives succeed, change behaviour and grow your brand, why don’t you get in touch? After all, in the last year we have helped 29.5 different brands do just that.