Scale library · Marketing & branding
Attitude toward the ad and brand scales (Aad, Ab)
Attitude toward the ad (Aad) is a viewer's favourable or unfavourable evaluation of a specific advertisement; MacKenzie and Lutz (1989) measured it with 3 pairs of opposite adjectives and showed that Aad influences attitude toward the brand. Attitude toward the brand (Ab) uses the 5 adjective pairs of Spears and Singh (2004), built specifically to separate attitude from purchase intention. The two scales often appear together in experimental theses on video ads, social media ads, celebrity ads and AI-generated advertising.
Cite the original, not the blog.
- Model or scale: Aad – Ab
- Constructs: 2
- Items: 8
Original English items
Items marked (R) are reverse-coded: recode them before computing reliability or scale scores. Replace bracketed placeholders such as [system] with the name of the system, brand or organization you study.
Attitude toward the Ad (AAD, 3 items)
| Code | Item wording | Reverse-coded |
|---|---|---|
| AAD1 | Bad – Good | No |
| AAD2 | Unpleasant – Pleasant | No |
| AAD3 | Unfavorable – Favorable | No |
Attitude toward the Brand (AB, 5 items)
| Code | Item wording | Reverse-coded |
|---|---|---|
| AB1 | Unappealing – Appealing | No |
| AB2 | Bad – Good | No |
| AB3 | Unpleasant – Pleasant | No |
| AB4 | Unfavorable – Favorable | No |
| AB5 | Unlikable – Likable | No |
Response scale
7-point semantic differential between two opposite adjectives, for example 1 = Bad … 7 = Good. It is not an agreement scale.
Licence and permission
The adjective pairs are published in academic articles and widely used in advertising research. Cite the original articles; we found no permission requirement for non-commercial academic use.
Sources (APA 7)
- MacKenzie, S. B., & Lutz, R. J. (1989). An empirical examination of the structural antecedents of attitude toward the ad in an advertising pretesting context. Journal of Marketing, 53(2), 48–65. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298905300204
- Spears, N., & Singh, S. N. (2004). Measuring attitude toward the brand and purchase intentions. Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising, 26(2), 53–66. https://doi.org/10.1080/10641734.2004.10505164
Vietnamese translation
A Vietnamese translation of every item, with sample-size advice and studies that used the scale, is on the Vietnamese page for this scale.