7 Creative testing tools for smart market researchers

It sounds contradictory: loose and flowing creativity, and data-rich, consumer research and testing.

But in the world of marketing, creatives have a whole host of measurable effects they should dig into—and many of them are more tangible than the oohs and aahs you hear in the Louvre.

Creative testing tools help marketing teams evaluate and refine various aspects of their creative materials, like advertisements, website designs, landing pages, logos, imagery… the list goes on. By testing different variations of elements—even going as granular as headlines, color schemes and copy, these tools provide valuable insights and key metrics into what resonates most with your target audience.

And what can you do with this insight? You can use it before a campaign launch and for your future marketing activities to make sure you’re resonating with the right audiences in the right way—and ultimately turning them into paying customers!

TL;DR:

1. Attest

2. Smartly

3. Numerator Testing Panel

4. Remesh

5. Zappi

6. Qualtrics

7. Creative testing platform

1. Attest

With Attest, you’re getting an awesome creative testing platform—and much, MUCH more!

You get access to a dedicated research expert who’s there to guide you every step of the way, to make sure your creative research projects are well planned and give you genuinely useful insights. Whether you’re A/B testing some upcoming ads, or redesigning your website, you’ll get your reliable insights with Attest.

And you hit the ground running with our creative testing survey template, or you can start from scratch if you prefer. We’ve also got a bunch of super useful content to help you with your creative testing—this content comes straight from our Customer Research team!

What about your audience? Well you can reach 125 million people in 59 countries with Attest. That’s a whole lot of insight waiting for you at your fingertips!

We know how important accuracy is for your reliable consumer research, so we’ve incorporated AI and human checks to make sure your results are actually valuable to you and your business. And we’ve done this all while keeping our tool super easy to use.

Rating: G2 users give Attest 4.5 out of 5 stars

Key features:

• Fast, representative survey results: Attest’s approach to audience panels means you get your results quickly, and that they truly represent your real audience.
• Designated research advice: We’ve said it once, but it’s so good that it’s worth repeating! Attest customers have access to a designated Customer Research Manager—an expert in market research who’s on hand to help you create beautifully designed surveys and analyze them effectively. Don’t know your Nat Rep from your statistical significance? Fear not—the Customer Research Team is here for you!
• Creative testing surveys: Attest allows you to create and distribute surveys to your target audience, collecting feedback on different creative concepts. This lets you understand consumer preferences, identify high-performing elements, and make informed decisions about your marketing materials, campaign, ad concept and more!
• Audience segmentation: You can segment your audience based on demographics, behaviors and preferences, letting you dig into the nuances of your audience insights. It also helps you tailor your creative testing to specific target segments.
• Competitor analysis: You can (and should) test your competitors’ creative assets to see how they perform compared to yours. It might sound cheeky but it’s totally allowed! You can benchmark your marketing materials against competitors’ offerings, gaining a comprehensive understanding of your industry landscape and identifying opportunities for improvement (and how you can one-up the competition).

Previously when we’ve had to do qualitative research, it’s taken months and months. Attest gets the information that we need quickly. By the very next day, we’re able to implement some of the changes and then go back for round two. We found that a lot of people don’t like our current website. We discovered that tweaking our colorways and simplifying how we are designing things makes our brand seem much more trustworthy and mainstream.

Simon Gray, Head of Marketing, Zzoomm

Best used for: Attest is best suited for market researchers and marketing teams looking to make data-driven decisions in their creative testing process.

Pricing: Learn about Attest’s pricing

Creative testing [with Attest] allowed us to make those little tweaks that made the difference between it being a campaign that was loved by people who already knew us, and one that genuinely did the job of raising awareness. It was essential to be able to report how much awareness had increased and prove that the campaign really did its job. We were really happy to be able to show that we hit all of our targets.

Emily Laws, Head of Brand at Lucky Saint

2. Smartly

Smartly is a creative testing tool that also helps you simplify workflows.

Creating a social ad campaign or testing some creative assets? From social ads, to templates to tracking, you’ll find it all in one platform.

Rating: G2 users rate Smartly 4.4 out of 5 stars

Key features:

• Integrations and importing data: Smartly makes it easy to work within just their platform and reduces switching to different tools, thanks to plenty of integrations and by allowing you to import 3rd party data.
• Built-in ad builder: You can design Facebook ads in Smartly, with plenty of templates and tools to make visually appealing and platform-fitting ads.
• Performance tracking and reporting: Smartly offers detailed performance tracking and reporting features, allowing users to monitor the impact of their creative testing efforts. You can set up scaled experiments and see their performance live in a dynamic dashboard.

Best used for: Creatives that will be used for ads on social media, such as Facebook and Instagram.

Pricing: Smartly doesn’t mention prices on its website, so book a demo to find out more.

3. Numerator Testing Panel

Numerator Testing Panel is a comprehensive panel tool and market research solution that helps your creative team screen concepts and ideas, test packages and ads, and measure the effectiveness of promotions.

Rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars

Key features:

• Ad testing and feedback: Conduct ad testing and gather feedback directly from your target audience.
• Promotion effectiveness measurement: Measure the emotional impact of promotions on major purchase decisions to optimize your ad campaign.
• Package testing and design refinement: Gather feedback on package concepts, helping refine the design or manufacturing elements.

Best used for: With 1 million households in America, this is a US-based market research tool for companies who want to get creative test feedback fast.

Pricing: Request a demo to find out more about pricing.

4. Remesh

The first AI-powered creative testing tool on our list is Remesh. If you want to test your creatives at a large scale and get a lot of qualitative data fast, their platform could be a good choice for you.

Rating: Remesh gets 4.2 out of 5 stars on G2

Key features:

• Live conversation with up to 1,000 people: While it sounds chaotic, Remesh makes it completely doable thanks to AI.
• Real-time analytics: Artificial intelligence analyzes the incoming responses in real-time
• Change questions on the go: Based on the reactions you’re getting, you can change the course of the conversation

Best for: if you’re looking for quick yet qualitative data, Remesh could be a good choice.

Pricing: Request a demo to find out how much Remesh would cost for your specific use case.

5. Zappi

Zappi is a consumer insights platform for creators that can be used to gather data on your ad creative, product innovation ideas and provides related consulting services.

Rating: Zappi gets 4.5 out of 5 stars on G2.

Key features:

• Custom benchmarks: Easily compare your creative ads to those of your competitors or even against the entire industry.
• Creative suite: A go-to place in their platform for creative tests, where you can research and optimize your storylines, audio, tv, digital and static ads
• Predictive ad research: Unlock the insights from past ads as well to create ads that perform even better in the future

Best for: Zappi is aimed at ‘creators,’ in their words, anyone who works with brands, product ads or shopping experiences.

Pricing: Zappi has three pricing plans, Starter, Premium, and Enterprise. They don’t mention the prices on their website though, so reach out to their team for more information

6. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is an creative testing tool designed to streamline your decision-making process. It provides comprehensive solutions for your creative projects, leveraging advanced technology and a user-friendly interface.

Rating: Qualtrics gets 4.4 out of 5 stars on G2.

Key features:

• Measure brand impact and emotional response: Learn exactly how your target audience responds to your creatives and ad elements.
• Pre-made customizable survey templates: Get results even faster with ready-to-go templates that come with prebuilt logic and an automated workflow
• Multivariate testing: Run tests on various ads at a time to see which one is a winner and carefully pick your creative elements.

Best for: Qualtrics is best for organizations and individuals who are looking for a versatile and comprehensive platform for experience management, market research and customer feedback.

Pricing: Reach out to Qualtrics for a quote.

7. Creative Testing Platform

Creative Testing Platform is a scientifically validated, customizable software platform that provides fast results, giving you valuable insights into the attitudes and behaviors of real consumers towards any type of creative material that you test.

Rating: Creative Testing Platform has no ratings on G2.

Key features:

• EyeCoding: This is an online alternative to eye tracking to find out which elements of your ad most catch the eye of the viewer.​
• EmotionFlow: understand how your audience emotionally sees your ads, thanks to facial coding and AI technology.
• ValueFlow: with 5,000 benchmarks, you get real-time insight into how your ads are evaluated for optimization on the go.

Best for: It’s used by ad agencies, universities, and research companies who want to dig deep into human behavior and scientific tools but also want to work at a large scale.

Pricing: Creative Testing Platform doesn’t mention prices on the website. Reach out to them for a custom price.

Get your campaign off the ground with the #1 creative and A/B testing tool

Creative testing tools can multiply the magic of your creative teams.

By diving into your target audiences’ real feelings about your video content, ad copy and other creatives, you can elevate your brand and launch new campaigns that are top performers.

Previously when we’ve had to do qualitative research, it’s taken months and months. Attest gets the information that we need quickly. By the very next day, we’re able to implement some of the changes and then go back for round two.

Simon Gray, Head of Marketing, Zzoomm

Creative testing software FAQ