Checklist · 4 min read

Advertising & Media Research Checklist: 12 Steps Before You Commission a Study

A 12-step checklist for planning a advertising & media research project in India, from objectives and audience to sampling, quality control and reporting.

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Quick answer

Before commissioning advertising & media research, define the decision it will inform, the audience, the cities, the sample, the method, the timeline and the budget. Then agree quality-control and reporting standards with your agency.

At a glance

Guide type: Checklist · 4 minute read
Method covered: Advertising & Media Research
Research family: Quantitative research
Typical timeline: 2–4 weeks for a pre-test; continuous for campaign tracking
Typical sample: 150–250 respondents per execution tested, per market
Written for: Project managers running the study · In-house teams doing it themselves · Reviewers signing off a vendor plan

Key takeaways

Start from the business decision, not the questionnaire
Fix the audience definition early
Agree QC and deliverables upfront
Plan how findings will be used

Reader intent

Who this guide is for

Three readers arrive here with different problems. Each should be able to act on this page without reading all of it.

Project managers running the study
A working sequence for a advertising & media research project, from brief through field to debrief.
In-house teams doing it themselves
The quality controls an agency would apply, written so that you can apply them yourself.
Reviewers signing off a vendor plan
Read it as an audit list against the proposal currently on your desk.

The 12-step checklist

Write down the business decision
List the information gaps
Define the target audience precisely
Choose cities and the urban/rural split
Set the sample size and key segments
Pick the method (ad pre-testing, campaign tracking, media habits, creative diagnostics)
Agree languages and translation
Draft and pilot the questionnaire or guide
Agree quality-control checks
Set the timeline and milestones
Define deliverables and format
Plan the debrief and next actions

Why the order matters

Each step constrains the next. Changing the audience late, for example, can reset sampling, cost and timeline.

How Market Research India can help

Market Research India designs and runs advertising & media research projects across 50 Indian cities and 30 industries. A senior research director leads every study, and our own supervised teams handle the fieldwork. You get clear recommendations, not just data tables.

Share your objective and we will send a scoped, fixed-fee proposal within 24 hours, with a recommended method, sample and timeline.

What goes wrong

Common mistakes in advertising & media research

Most disappointing advertising & media research studies fail for reasons that were visible in the design, not in the fieldwork. These are the ones we see most often, and what to do instead.

01
Judging an animatic as finished film
Rough executions under-score on likeability and over-score on message clarity. Read the diagnostics, and compare only against animatic norms.
02
Measuring liking instead of branding
An ad everyone enjoys and nobody attributes to you is a cost. Branded recall and message take-out come before likeability.
03
Exposure without clutter
Showing one ad in isolation inflates recall. Place it in a reel with competitive and category advertising.
04
Post-testing with no baseline
Without a pre-campaign read, any movement can be attributed to anything. Baseline before the first spot airs.
05
A questionnaire nobody piloted
Routing errors, ambiguous scales and a 35-minute runtime are cheap to find in a 30-interview pilot and expensive to find in the full dataset.
06
Fieldwork without an audit trail
GPS tags, timestamps, audio snippets and back-checks are what let you defend a finding when a regional team disputes it. Specify them in the contract.

Run through this before sign-off

Your checklist before you brief anyone

A working sequence for a advertising & media research project. Most of it costs nothing, and it saves the two weeks a re-field would take.

1
Agree the norm or benchmark the result will be judged against before testing.
2
Expose the execution inside a clutter reel of competitive advertising.
3
Measure branded recall and message take-out before asking about likeability.
4
Test in the languages the media plan will actually run in.
5
Read the diagnostics with the creative team present, so the fix is agreed in the room.
6
Agree the minimum reportable base before fieldwork, and hold the line in the tables.
7
Agree in writing who acts on each finding, and by when, before the debrief ends.

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Answers

Frequently asked questions

The questions buyers ask us most often before they commission advertising & media research.

Can an agency help with the checklist?

Yes. A good agency will workshop these steps with you before it quotes.

From guide to project

Where advertising & media research actually gets commissioned

If this guide has settled the method, these are the pages worth opening next: the service itself, and the markets where advertising & media research is most often run for our clients.

Keep exploring

Advertising & Media Research Checklist: 12 Steps Before You Commission a Study

Who this guide is for

The 12-step checklist

Why the order matters

How Market Research India can help

Common mistakes in advertising & media research

Your checklist before you brief anyone

Frequently asked questions

Where advertising & media research actually gets commissioned

More reading on advertising & media research

More on advertising & media research

Other checklist articles

Advertising & Media Research city by city

Related research services

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