Journal of Marketing Behavior, 2016, 2: 177–194 Marketers’ Intuitions about the Sales Effectiveness of Advertisements Nicole Hartnett, Rachel Kennedy, Byron Sharp and Luke Greenacre * University of South Australia, Australia ABSTRACT Advertisements vary enormously in their sales effectiveness, so choos- ing the more effective advertisements to air is an important marketing task. Such decisions are often made intuitively. This study assesses the intuitive predictions made by a global sample of marketers regarding which television ads are more or less sales effective. The findings show that marketers’ predictions were correct no more often than random chance. Multivariate analysis suggests that those with category expe- rience and those in marketing or consumer insights roles make slightly better predictions. Aside from who makes better predictions, further research is needed on how to improve advertising decisions, including use of evidence-based decision support systems and team decision-making. Keywords: Advertising, Consumer packaged goods, Television, Creativity, In- dividual Decision Making, Marketing Decisions Models, Marketing Information Systems Making better marketing decisions than one’s competitors is important for business success. Marketers must often decide which ads to air and/or what ads to support with a substantial portion of their media budgets. These decisions concern one of the largest expenses for consumer brand companies, with media spending typically equivalent in value to profits (Sharp 2010). In this paper, we examine the ability of marketers to choose ads appropriately. Specifically, we ask a large group of marketers and advertising agency executives to predict which ads they believe are better or worse in driving product sales and compare these predictions with in-market results. Their predictions are made based on intuition, which is commonly relied upon when deciding which ads to air (Rossiter and Bellman 2005). * Nicole Hartnett, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia. Rachel Kennedy, Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of South Australia. Byron Sharp. Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science, University of ISSN 2326-568X; DOI 10.1561/107.00000034 © 2016 N. Hartnett, R. Kennedy, B. Byron, and L. Greenacre