Abstract:

We instinctively feel that advertising awareness should have some place in assessing advertising. However, there have been many reports of researchers failing to find a relationship between advertising awareness and attitude change, and the assumption has been made that attitude changes are more valid. This paper reviews a large databank of continuous tracking data and concludes that there are relationships between ad. awareness, communication and attitude change that make good intuitive sense; but that these are not immediately apparent because both attitude change and ad. awareness are more complex than is often supposed. Moreover, the assumption that attitude changes are the more valid criterion is probably incorrect.