The Ad Council measures its success based on:

• (a) the levels of donated media (using a formula to determine what a donated placement of an ad was "worth")
• (b) the dollar equivalents of press coverage the campaign receives
• (c) response to the advertised toll-free number and website
• (d) pre- and post-campaign launch tracking studies among the target audience, measuring awareness of the communications, attitude changes, behavior changes (using transtheoretical model) and recall of PSAs

According to Patty Goldman at the Ad Council, "Unfortunately, we don't have concrete goals beyond raising awareness of the issue, raising awareness of the ads, and trying to see in the tracking studies that more people are (reporting) watching what they eat and getting more exercise. We have too great a variety in our campaign issue areas, creative quality, media exposure, type of call to action, campaign sponsor support for an issue, PR value of an issue, relative isolation of our campaigns, and other factors, to be able to establish norms, e.g. "raise awareness of an issue by x%."

(source: personal communication with Goldman, 11/30/04)