Research reveals what truly makes ads work

In the 1930s, George Gallup transformed advertising from guesswork into science. While at Young & Rubicam, he didn’t just measure whether people looked at ads; he amassed scores of data on which layouts, headlines, and visuals consistently outperformed others. His partner Vaughan Flannery applied these findings to every campaign, boosting readership above competing agencies nationwide.

Fast-forward to today, and most organizations still start each new campaign with a blank slate—ignoring decades of research on attention factors. Yet the behavioral biases and visual triggers Gallup uncovered remain relevant. We still read drop-initials 13 percent more often, and we still favor headlines that promise concrete benefits.

A Harvard study on information retrieval echoes this lesson: externalizing knowledge into a searchable system drastically reduces repetition and accelerates learning. By capturing research findings, you build an institutional memory that outpaces any single creative team’s intuition.

In practice, codifying these factors helps marketers pick high-yield techniques rather than reinventing the wheel. It turns advertising from a lottery into a reproducible process where you can tweak, test, and refine for consistent improvement.

Begin by digging through your archives—reports, surveys, Google Analytics, whatever you have—and pull every metric tied to an ad’s success. Next, scan for common elements—word counts, visuals, formats—that matched higher performance. Capture those patterns in a simple spreadsheet with columns for medium, message trigger, and result. Finally, set a quarterly reminder to revisit and enrich this guide with fresh data. Over time, you’ll build your own treasure trove of proven triggers that make every new campaign smarter. Try spending an hour on it this week.