Persuasion & Purchase Intent

Also known as: Purchase Intent Shift, Persuasion Score, Purchase Intent

Measure of how much an ad increases the consumer's willingness to buy the advertised brand.

Persuasion (Persuasion Score or Purchase Intent Shift) is the measure of the increase in consumer purchase intent after exposure to an ad. It is the ad testing KPI most directly related to the desired business outcome: more purchases.

It is typically measured by comparing the purchase intent of an exposed group vs. an unexposed control group, or measuring the same person before and after seeing the ad.

An ad can have high recall and high likeability but low persuasion—it's entertaining but doesn't move the needle on purchase intent. Therefore persuasion is the most critical KPI in copy testing from a business perspective.

Persuasion benchmarks vary significantly by category (FMCG vs. durables vs. services), making industry norm comparisons indispensable.