This paper presents a comprehensive methodology for studying advertising communication, based on the experience of visual research. It enables to identify the content of an advertising text, technological impact factors and intertextual contacts. The author demonstrates ways of obtaining representative data from a client brief and a creative concept by analyzing the final communicative product - the advertising text; shows how to provide evidence at the level of structural-semantic analysis of the text; explains why it is important to identify the influence on the advertising text of relevant infrastructural factors; and points out what theoretical and practical observations are best suited to summarize the results of a comprehensive analysis. The paper analyzes the format of the creative brief proposed by the Association of Communication Agencies of Russia, describes the author's model of the creative concept, updates the author's category in relation to advertising communication and shows the levels of intertextual links in advertising. The creative brief recommended by ACAR consists of four modules: basic information, presentation of the object to be promoted, the portrait of the target audience and the client's ideas of an advertising campaign. The creative concept consists of universal components (insight, the nature of the advertising impact, the strategy used, the key image, and the advertising message) and the characteristics determined by the communicative features of a specific advertising text. Knowledge of the research methodology for advertising text and advertising communication, strict adherence to this methodology provide the necessary representativeness of obtained data.