Google has reportedly been testing ad effectiveness with the creation of a fake pizza brand for which it served up ads on YouTube.

The Unskippable Labs team, which partners with brands and agencies to run experiments with video content on YouTube, created a fake brand called ‘Doctor Fork’. It then used stock footage to create 33 ads, in partnership with Nestle and Brigham Young University associate professor of marketing Ryan Elder, and managed to reach 20m impressions, according to TechCrunch.

The aim of the ads was to see answer questions about sensory cues on ad effectiveness and how much human presence there should be in food ads – or ‘man versus food’.

The experiment found that multi-sensory experiences drive better recall than single sensory experiences; separating visuals and audio increases recall and favourability; explicit instruction to image increases both recall and favourability; super close shots of food drive recall and favourability; there are ways beyond ‘bite-and-smile’ to show a pleasurable food experience; and younger audiences respond better to first-person perspectives than older audiences.