5 Best Survey Software & Tools for Ad Testing (Key Factors)

When choosing survey software for ad testing, here are the key factors worth evaluating:

• Asset type support: Can you test static images, GIFs, audio, and video directly inside the survey, or are you limited?

• Proven ad testing track record: Does the platform have case studies or examples showing they’ve specifically helped people run ad tests similar to yours?

• Data quality and fraud detection: If respondents are rushing through your survey or using fraudulent techniques, does the audience panel have measures in place to catch that? You need to trust the data before you act on it.

• Transparent, flexible pricing: Can you pay per response with pricing that’s visible as you build your survey? Or are you locked into expensive annual contracts regardless of how much you actually use it?

• Turnaround time: If you need several hundred responses from a general population audience in a matter of hours, can the platform deliver? And for niche audiences that naturally take longer, can it still field responses faster than competitors?

• Strategic guidance, not just basic technical support: Can you get guidance on survey design, audience targeting, or data analysis? And is that level of support complementary whether you’re a high-volume user or not?

• Ease of use & functionality: Does the platform offer time-saving features like pre-built ad testing templates or AI tools that help with survey creation, sentiment analysis, or summarizing key findings?

In this article, we’ll start with how Pollfish (our own ad testing survey platform) addresses these needs, then cover four other ad testing tools so you can make an informed decision.

Best Survey Software for Ad Testing

1. Pollfish
2. SurveyMonkey
3. Qualtrics
4. Alchemer
5. Attest

1. Pollfish

Pollfish is our DIY survey tool that excels at ad testing (along with other survey types).

It’s known for exceptional survey data quality, which you can read more about here: 3 Survey Data Quality Issues Sabotaging Your Research.

We also offer fully-managed services through our parent company, Prodege, and can help with as much or as little of the ad testing process as you need, whether it be research design, survey programming, sample & fielding, data processing & analysis, or reporting.

Below, we’ll focus specifically on our DIY survey platform and the key reasons to choose Pollfish for ad testing.

Reason #1: Flexible Asset Type Support

Pollfish supports all the major asset formats you’d want to test. Images are the most common, and you can easily set up an A/B test in our platform:

But beyond images, we also support GIFs, audio files, and video files. These are a great way to gauge engagement and brand recall, and can surface insights you wouldn’t get from static images alone.

In the example above, it’s an open-ended question asking “How believable is the ad?”

We manually review every open-ended response, not just to catch nonsensical answers, but to check whether the response is actually relevant to your survey objective.

Note that open-ended questions are just one of many survey question types we support:

Reason #2: Proven Ad & Creative Testing Track Record

Ad testing is one of Pollfish’s strongest use cases, and we have the results to prove it.

In a recent case study, our client BevCacao used Pollfish to test whether their product imagery resonated with shoppers before launching a paid social campaign. By running a creative sentiment study across specific demographics in their target market, they uncovered a “gross-out” factor in key groups.

That insight saved them significant ad spend and delivered a strong ROI on their investment.

Reason #3: Audience Data Quality & Fraud Prevention Measures

Pollfish’s parent company is Prodege, which operates one of the largest audience panels globally with over 250M consumers.

You get access to traditionally hard-to-reach audiences, including Gen Z, younger Hispanics, high-income individuals, C-suite professionals, and more.

One of the really unique things about our panel is that it’s not just a pure “survey-taking” place. Panelists can earn rewards by playing games, watching videos, uploading purchase receipts, and more. Because of this, they’re much more engaged than traditional panels. Instead of someone grinding through surveys for hours straight, our panelists might complete a survey, then play a game, watch a video, then come back to surveys. That natural variety keeps engagement high.

That diverse engagement also lets us verify respondent identities with greater confidence. For example, if someone uploads a purchase receipt from Kroger, that’s something a bot just can’t replicate. On top of that, we have a 14-day evaluation period that respondents must pass before participating in client surveys, continuous trust score monitoring, and sophisticated anti-fraud technology through Prodege QualityShield™.

Another benefit of panelists uploading purchase receipts is that you can target by verified behaviors, including stores visited, exact brands or products purchased, and more.

Using behavioral targeting is much more accurate than relying on self-reported preferences, and it’s one of the most unique things about our ad testing survey platform.

As several customers have noted:

“The most important point to make is that I trust the responses of my survey. My target audience was very specific and I could tell that the responses were legitimately coming [from] subjects in my target audience.”
– Read the full review here

“I had to get some data on a product in a tricky sector. It was proving challenging to attract participants to my study. I was able to quickly get results and some insights to be able to move forward with my work using Pollfish.”
– Read the full review here

“Each time I use this service I am blown away by the speed with which the responses come in and with the detail which most of them include. You can tell that the respondents take this very seriously. They must really enjoy doing it.”
– Read the full review here

“I was very satisfied with the results I got from Pollfish. My company was conducting market research and received very insightful help from consumers who were all verified homeowners.”
– Read the full review here

Reason #4: Transparent Pay-per-Response Pricing Model

While many competitors lock you into hefty subscriptions regardless of usage, we offer a transparent pay-per-response pricing model starting at $0.95 per response, with significant volume discounts available.

As you build out your ad testing survey, you’ll see the cost breakdown in the top right updating in real-time. The price shown is what you’ll actually pay. No surprise fees down the line. That sounds like it should be industry standard, but we’ve heard from plenty of customers that it’s not.

As several users have noted in their reviews:

“The dollar amount they quote you in their cost calculator tool, and the number they show when you’re developing the survey, is the number you pay. I was burned multiple times by [competitor] charging me unexpected amounts and making it difficult to quit an expensive subscription. I’m so happy to have found Pollfish as an alternative. Their support team also responds VERY quickly to chat messages and has been tremendously helpful the few times I had questions.”
– Read the full review here

“The pricing is clear and transparent from the beginning. The results come quickly and can be downloaded in different formats and with different filters. What we like most is the ability to filter the results and analyze them separately for each segment. We highly recommend this platform.”
– Read the full review here

“They charge based on the completed response. It is very fair and transparent. As a researcher, I have used many survey platforms, but they are the best so far.”
– Read the full review here

Reason #5: Fast Turnaround Times (From Hours to Days)

Because Pollfish sources respondents primarily from our first-party audience panels rather than third-party providers, we offer some of the fastest turnaround times in the industry.

For general population audiences, you can get several hundred responses in just hours:

“I needed a 25 question survey answered, and was able to get 500 completed surveys in 8 hours with Pollfish. The presentation of the results is very impressive and the demographics information Pollfish provided is invaluable.”
– Read the full review here

“I honestly thought the results would take days, and I was starting to get worried because I was using Pollfish for a quarterly goal and I was trying to make it before the deadline. However, I received the results in literally just a few hours!”
– Read the full review here

“The thing that amazes me most is how quickly you can get your data results back. So fast! Usually in a couple of hours.”
– Read the full review here

For more niche audiences, it naturally takes longer, typically a few days. But even then, our turnaround times consistently outpace most competitors:

“I’m amazed at how quickly the platform was able to deliver rich, segmentable data from over 500 respondents. I had feature-ready insights in only 3 days.”
– Read the full review here

“I’ve used Pollfish before so when I needed to test concepts for a new business pitch in 5 countries over the holiday, I turned to Pollfish. The surveys were easy to set up, allowed me to select my very specific target and launched right away. Within a couple of days I had my results in an easy to interpret, actionable format well within my budget.”
– Read the full review here

“I found the platform super-easy to use and we received feedback on our new name and logo from our target audience within a few days.”
– Read the full review here

Reason #6: Strategic Guidance (Not Just Basic Technical Support)

When you reach out to Pollfish support, we can of course help with basic platform and navigation questions.

But we also go beyond that. If you need help from a market researcher for more strategic guidance — whether that’s survey design, audience targeting, data analysis, or anything else related to your ad testing survey — we can help.

And this isn’t reserved for high-volume users. We offer that level of support to anyone on the platform. You’re essentially getting enterprise-grade research support at a consumer price.

We want all our customers to succeed, and it’s a central philosophy we operate with.

As several users have noted in their reviews:

“The customer service team is super responsive too for those more complex enquiries about the tool and criteria. All in all this experience has been way easier (and cheaper) than any other ‘big players’ out there”
– Read the full review here

“I love this product. I feel like it gives me enterprise grade market survey tech at a consumer price. Highly recommend. I love how responsive the customer support team is.”
– Read the full review here

“The customer service I received was fantastic. Brilliant guidance that helped get high-quality results. I was really pleased with the outcome and highly recommend using them.”
– Read the full review here

Reason #7: Ease of Use & Functionality

We offer a wide range of intuitive features designed to save you time throughout your ad testing survey process.

For example, you can start with our pre-filled ad testing template, which is built on market research best practices:

Edit the template however you’d like, add or remove questions, and get up and running faster than building from scratch.

Or, use our AI survey builder. Just describe your ad testing objective in plain language and it builds the entire survey for you, including components like skip logic and branching, which is something our customers really appreciate.

Beyond the actual creation of your ad testing surveys, we also offer AI survey analysis capabilities that don’t replace manual analysis, but help you get to insights faster and surface things you might have missed.

As several users have noted regarding Pollfish’s ease of use and functionality:

“Pollfish is probably the single easiest software I’ve ever used. The drag and drop builder is great itself, but the template library also has anything we ever need, so you rarely have to design anything from scratch. The templates are also designed very well, we usually pick one, do a couple edits, and deploy. The whole thing takes less than 10 minutes.”
– Read the full review here

“The surveys were easy to set up, allowed me to select my very specific target and launched right away. Within a couple of days I had my results in an easy to interpret, actionable format well within my budget.”
– Read the full review here

“I have used this platform ~10x over time and find the process easy, their review process helpful, and the insights I get from people valuable as I work through different product concepts in market research. Their pricing is more reasonable than other competitors I’ve looked into, and am happily going to continue using Pollfish.”
– Read the full review here

Interested in Trying Out Pollfish for Your Ad Testing Survey Needs?

We invite you to:

• Sign up for a free account, no credit card required.
• View our pricing page and get an instant estimate of your ad testing survey cost.
• Inquire about our fully-managed service, fulfilled through our parent company, Prodege.

2. SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a DIY survey testing platform that offers ad testing capabilities.

We’ve published an article on how SurveyMonkey compares to Pollfish in terms of audience quality, survey pricing, and customer support quality.

Some of SurveyMonkey’s key features and functionality include:

• AI capabilities to create surveys and get to insights faster
• 200+ integrations with a variety of software and business applications
• A variety of survey question types and templates to help with survey design
• Question bank with a library of expert-written survey questions
• Smart notifications to notify team members based on custom triggers
• Multilingual surveys in respondents’ preferred languages

3. Qualtrics

Qualtrics is another ad testing software that lets you conduct surveys and test creative concepts.

We’ve published an in-depth comparison of how Qualtrics and SurveyMonkey compare to Pollfish.

On Qualtrics’ site, they break down their products into 3 categories:

1. Market Research

• Product & Innovation Research
• User Experience Research
• Market & Audience Understanding

2. Customer Experience

• Voice of Customer
• Omnichannel Experience Management
• Location Experience Management

3. Employee Experience

• 360 Development Feedback
• Employee Engagement
• Employee Onboarding & Exit

4. Alchemer

Alchemer is another survey software that can help you run ad testing surveys and identify winning ad creatives.

Some of their features and benefits include:

• Advanced survey customization, including logic and branching
• Multiple survey question types
• Multichannel deployment
• AI-powered data analysis
• 400+ integrations with a plethora of business software
• Full-service research services

Note We’ve created an article on the Best Alchemer Alternatives if you want to weigh your options.

5. Attest

Attest is another market research platform with ad testing capabilities and can help you understand customer purchase intent.

Some of their features and capabilities include:

• Advanced survey customization including skip logic and branching
• Survey templates and multimedia compatibility
• AI survey creation and analysis
• Concept testing and MaxDiff capabilities
• MCP server and Integrations with popular business tools
• Ability to reach audiences across 59 markets

Note: We’ve created an article on the Best Attest Alternatives if you want to weigh your options.

Interested in Creating a Free Pollfish Account?

We invite you to try Pollfish for your ad testing survey needs:

• Sign up for a free account, no credit card required.
• View our pricing page and get an instant estimate of your ad testing survey cost.
• Inquire about our fully-managed service, fulfilled through parent company Prodege.