Attitude Toward the Ad (Creativeness) (ATTA)

1. Abstract

The Attitude Toward the Ad (Creativeness) (commonly abbreviated as ATTA) is an empirical psychometric instrument designed to evaluate consumer perceptions of creative execution within advertising stimuli. Developed and validated within consumer psychology and marketing communications research by Robert S. Heiser, Jeremy J. Sierra, and Ivonne M. Torres (2008), the instrument operationalizes perceived advertising creativity not merely as artistic novelty, but as a multidimensional evaluative response encompassing cognitive, aesthetic, and functional facets. Specifically, the scale measures the extent to which an advertisement is interpreted by the target audience as being original, well-made, and logical. Composed of a concise battery of semantic differential items anchored by bipolar adjectives (typically formatted across 7-point response intervals), the scale provides a robust, low-burden assessment of affective and cognitive consumer dispositions toward creative print, digital, and broadcast promotional messages.

Psychometrically, the instrument exhibits strong internal consistency, with reported Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently exceeding the conventional .80 threshold across experimental and survey administrations (frequently reaching .85 to .91). Confirmatory factor analytic (CFA) investigations demonstrate distinct unifactorial convergence or well-defined second-order structures that capture both divergence/novelty and execution/relevance dimensions, reflecting classical theories of advertising creativity (e.g., the dual-criteria framework of novelty and appropriateness). The ATTA exhibits robust convergent validity with overarching measures of attitude toward the ad ($A_{ad}$), attitude toward the brand ($A_b$), brand equity, and purchase intentions, while preserving discriminant validity against unrelated affective responses such as irritation, confusion, or general ad skepticism. This article provides an exhaustive psychometric documentation of the ATTA scale, detailing its theoretical underpinnings, structural validity, factor composition, administrative guidelines, and contemporary academic and industry applications.

2. Keywords

Attitude Toward the Ad, Advertising Creativity, ATTA, Consumer Psychology, Ad Execution, Perceived Originality, Ad Likeability, Semantic Differential, Marketing Psychometrics, Distinctiveness Effect

3. Authors

The scale was formalized and empirical properties published in the Journal of Advertising by:

• Robert S. Heiser, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, Maine Business School, University of Maine, Orono, ME, USA. Specializes in consumer behavior, marketing communication, and brand strategy.
• Jeremy J. Sierra, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, McCoy College of Business Administration, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA. Renowned scholar in advertising theory, consumer brand engagement, psychometrics, and quantitative modeling in behavioral marketing.
• Ivonne M. Torres, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing, College of Business Administration, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM, USA. Research expertise spans cross-cultural consumer behavior, advertising messaging strategies, and promotional effectiveness.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward the Ad (Creativeness) (ATTA) scale is to measure an audience’s psychological perception of the creative value embedded within advertising execution. For decades, marketing communications scholars debated the precise mechanism through which advertising execution influences brand evaluations. While omnibus Attitude Toward the Ad ($A_{ad}$) measures historically aggregated general affective responses (e.g., pleasant/unpleasant, favorable/unfavorable), they consistently obscured the exact creative elements responsible for communicative persuasion. The ATTA scale was developed to bridge this diagnostic gap by isolating creativeness as a distinct, actionable evaluative construct.

From a research perspective, the instrument allows behavioral scientists to isolate the specific role of creative cues—such as anthropomorphic cartoon spokespeople, humorous narratives, surrealistic visual rhetoric, and non-linear narrative copywriting—in shaping viewer information processing. In the foundational study by Heiser, Sierra, and Torres (2008), the scale was deployed to examine the distinctiveness effect, investigating how cartoon characters amplify message recall, cognitive elaborations, and attitudinal favorability relative to standard human or product-centric visuals.

In applied and commercial market research settings, the ATTA serves as an essential diagnostic pre-testing and copy-testing tool. When consumer goods companies, creative agencies, and media firms launch costly multi-platform campaigns, they require precise metrics to determine whether an ad is perceived as meaningfully novel or dismissively bizarre, and whether high originality is balanced by structural logic and craftsmanship. By evaluating ads along the dimensions of originality, execution quality, and logical coherence, the ATTA enables creative directors to benchmark early-stage storyboards, animatics, and finished executions against normative industry standards, reducing financial risk and mitigating market failure.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the ATTA is Perceived Advertising Creativeness. In psychological literature, creativity is canonically defined as the convergence of two indispensable qualities: novelty (or divergence) and appropriateness (or relevance/utility). Within the context of advertising persuasion, the ATTA conceptualizes creativeness as an audience-level cognitive-affective judgment that the promotional execution possesses rare, innovative, and aesthetically coherent features that serve the persuasive message. The construct is delineated across three core constituent dimensions:

5.1. Perceived Originality (Divergence)

This facet assesses the viewer’s recognition of novelty, uniqueness, and unexpectedness in the advertisement. Grounded in schema congruity theory, originality occurs when an advertisement breaks normative category templates or creative clichés. In the ATTA framework, this dimension registers whether the advertisement is perceived as fresh, inventive, and novel, versus mundane, conventional, and derivative. For example, an insurance ad featuring an animated gecko or a humorous personification of chaos represents high perceived originality compared to a traditional informational ad featuring an actuary sitting at a desk.

5.2. Execution Quality (Craftsmanship and Well-Made Nature)

Originality alone is insufficient for advertising effectiveness; an ad that is novel but poorly produced generates negative consumer inferences regarding firm competence. The second dimension of the construct captures aesthetic sophistication, visual polish, professional composition, and artistic excellence. It reflects the respondent’s evaluation that the execution is “well-made,” demonstrating high production values, elegant art direction, seamless editing, and refined copywriting. This facet taps into consumers’ implicit appreciation of corporate effort and artistic competence.

5.3. Logical Coherence (Meaningfulness and Appropriateness)

The third pillar of the construct ensures that the creative deviation is meaningful rather than gratuitous. Creative advertising must maintain cognitive linkage to the advertised brand, problem solution, or core value proposition. The “logical” dimension evaluates whether the creative execution makes sense within the narrative context, whether the visual metaphor connects intuitively to the product attribute, and whether the audience can decode the intended communicative message. When an ad is original and well-made but completely nonsensical, consumers experience cognitive frustration, leading to high ad confusion rather than creative appreciation.

6. Theoretical Framework

The development and application of the ATTA scale are anchored in several interconnected psychological and communication paradigms:

6.1. The Dual-Criteria Model of Creativity

Rooted in the psychometric theories of J. P. Guilford and expanded by Teresa Amabile, creativity requires both divergence (generating unusual, original ideas) and relevance/task-appropriateness. In advertising, Robert E. Smith and colleagues formalized this by distinguishing between ad divergence (flexibility, originality, elaboration, synthesis, and artistic value) and ad relevance (meaningfulness to the consumer). The ATTA embeds both criteria into an integrated evaluation: originality captures divergence, while logical design and high execution quality establish communicative relevance.

6.2. The Distinctiveness Effect and Von Restorff Paradigm

The foundational investigation by Heiser, Sierra, and Torres (2008) directly leveraged the distinctiveness effect—the cognitive principle (akin to the Von Restorff effect) that stimuli that stand out from their background or context are more readily encoded, attract sustained focal attention, and produce superior episodic retrieval. Creative ads stand out within cluttered commercial media environments. The ATTA quantifies the psychological magnitude of this distinctiveness from the consumer’s subjective vantage point.

6.3. Dual Mediation Hypothesis (DMH) of Advertising Persuasion

The Dual Mediation Hypothesis posits that attitude toward the ad ($A_{ad}$) exerts both a direct affective transfer to brand attitude ($A_b$) and an indirect cognitive route via brand cognitions ($C_b$). Creative executions measured by the ATTA stimulate both pathways: high perceived originality and artistry evoke immediate positive affective arousal (direct path), while the logical coherence of the creative device encourages message elaboration and favorable product-related thoughts (indirect path), culminating in elevated purchase intent.

7. Validity

The ATTA has been subjected to rigorous psychometric scrutiny to establish its construct, convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity across diverse empirical conditions:

7.1. Construct and Convergent Validity

Construct validity is evidenced by strong, statistically significant item-to-total correlations (typically exceeding .70) and substantial average variance extracted (AVE) estimates exceeding .60, indicating that the latent construct accounts for the majority of the variance in its measured indicators. When examined against established multi-item scales measuring general ad liking, visual rhetoric comprehension, and cognitive absorption, the ATTA demonstrates high convergent correlations ($r = .65$ to $.78, p < .001$), confirming that the tool effectively captures creative evaluation without straying into unrelated psychological domains.

7.2. Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity was established through Fornell and Larcker’s (1981) criterion and confirmatory factor comparative modeling. The shared variance between the ATTA and adjacent constructs—such as brand familiarity, ad skepticism, ad-evoked irritation, and generalized consumer ethnocentrism—is markedly lower than the AVE of the ATTA itself. Constrained-unconstrained nested model chi-square difference tests consistently demonstrate that forcing correlation parameters between creativeness and general ad favorability to unity ($
ho = 1.0$) results in a significant deterioration in model fit ($Deltachi^2(1) > 45.0, p < .001$), proving that perceived creativeness is conceptually and empirically distinct from general ad liking.

7.3. Predictive and Nomological Validity

Nomological validity is demonstrated through structural equation models (SEM) mapping the downstream behavioral consequences of perceived creativity. Research utilizing the ATTA confirms that higher creativeness scores significantly predict increased ad recall ($R^2$ changes between 12% and 22%), enhanced brand recall, elevated brand attitudes ($eta = .35$ to $.52, p < .01$), and higher purchase intentions. Furthermore, in experimental manipulations varying visual execution formats (e.g., cartoon vs. human photographic spokespersons), the ATTA successfully detected hypothesized significant differences in perceived creativity, confirming its sensitivity as an experimental manipulation check.

8. Reliability

The reliability of the Attitude Toward the Ad (Creativeness) instrument has been validated across both student and non-student consumer samples, exhibiting high internal consistency and measurement stability:

• Internal Consistency (Cronbach’s Alpha): In the initial validation studies by Heiser, Sierra, and Torres (2008), the scale demonstrated exceptional internal consistency, with Cronbach’s $\alpha$ coefficients ranging from .86 to .91 across diverse experimental conditions. Subsequent replications and contextual adaptations have reported alpha coefficients consistently between .83 and .92.
• Composite Reliability (CR): Structural equation modeling evaluations report composite reliability coefficients routinely exceeding .88, comfortably surpassing the standard psychometric cutoff of .70 recommended by Nunnally and Bernstein (1994).
• Average Variance Extracted (AVE): AVE values calculated for the latent creativeness factor reliably exceed .65, confirming that the scale indicators capture true construct variance with minimal measurement error.
• Test-Retest Reliability: While advertising attitude measures are naturally subject to situational wear-out and memory decay, laboratory test-retest assessments separated by a two-week interval have demonstrated stable temporal reliability ($r_{tt} = .76$ to $.82$), indicating consistent baseline evaluations of stable print stimuli.

9. Factor Analysis

Extensive exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) have confirmed the structural integrity of the ATTA instrument:

9.1. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial principal components and maximum likelihood factor extractions with varimax or oblimin rotations indicate a clear factor structure. A single primary factor with an eigenvalue substantially greater than 1.0 (typically accounting for 65% to 75% of total variance) emerges when evaluating the core semantic items. All individual factor loadings are robust, consistently ranging from .78 to .91, with negligible cross-loadings, demonstrating high structural parsimony.

9.2. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Fit Indices

Confirmatory factor models tested using AMOS and LISREL software establish excellent goodness-of-fit indices for the unifactorial/second-order creativeness model across multiple independent samples. Representative global fit indices reported in the literature include:

• $\chi^2 / df$ Ratio: Typically between 1.20 and 2.10, well below the conservative threshold of 3.0.
• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): Ranges between .97 and .99, indicating superior fit relative to the null baseline model.
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI / NNFI): Consistently exceeding .96.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): Estimates range from .031 to .055 with a 90% confidence interval spanning .000 to .078, indicating minimal approximation error.
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): Observed values are consistently below .035.

These robust metrics affirm that the instrument measures a coherent, psychometrically sound latent construct without redundant item covariance or localized structural strain.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The ATTA is structured as a compact semantic differential scale designed for rapid administration following exposure to an advertising stimulus. Its operational specifications are as follows:

• Test Type: Self-administered psychometric rating scale; semantic differential format.
• Administration Format: Paper-and-pencil questionnaire, web-based survey interface, or mobile copy-testing application.
• Target Population: Consumers, adolescents, and adults aged 16 and older participating in advertising, media, and marketing research studies.
• Item Count: Typically 3 to 5 core semantic differential adjective pairs (focusing on the triad of originality, production craftsmanship, and logical design).
• Response Scale: 7-point bipolar semantic differential scale (ranging from 1 to 7, where 1 indicates the negative anchor and 7 indicates the positive anchor).
• Administration Time: Under 2 minutes to complete following stimulus exposure.
• Scoring Procedure:
  • Scores for each bipolar pair are coded numerically from 1 (most negative/conventional anchor) to 7 (most positive/creative anchor).
  • Items should be randomized or counterbalanced during questionnaire administration to prevent left-side response bias; any reversed pairs must be recoded prior to computation.
  • An overall Creativeness Score is calculated by computing the unweighted arithmetic mean across all items: $\text{ATTA Score} = \frac{\sum_{i=1}^{k} Item_i}{k}$.
  • Higher aggregate scores (closer to 7.00) reflect elevated perceived advertising creativity, while lower scores (closer to 1.00) reflect derivative, poorly executed, or illogical advertising.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

• Year of Formal Publication: 2008.
• Original Source: Journal of Advertising (American Academy of Advertising).
• Permissions & Licensing: The scale items and psychometric parameters were published in the academic peer-reviewed public literature by Robert S. Heiser, Jeremy J. Sierra, and Ivonne M. Torres (2008). In accordance with standard academic fair use, the scale is generally accessible at no cost for scholarly, non-profit academic research and educational investigations, provided appropriate citation is given to the authors and the Journal of Advertising.
• Commercial Applications: Commercial market researchers, advertising agencies, and corporate brand testing platforms wishing to integrate the ATTA into proprietary copy-testing software or monetized testing platforms should review the copyright policies of Taylor & Francis / Routledge (current publisher of the Journal of Advertising) or contact the lead authors regarding formal licensing agreements.

12. References

• Amabile, T. M. (1983). The social psychology of creativity: A componential conceptualization. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(2), 357–376. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.45.2.357
• Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 18(1), 39–50. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378101800104
• Guilford, J. P. (1950). Creativity. American Psychologist, 5(9), 444–454. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0063487
• Heiser, R. S., Sierra, J. J., & Torres, I. M. (2008). Creativity via cartoon spokespeople in print ads: Capitalizing on the distinctiveness effect. Journal of Advertising, 37(4), 75–84. https://doi.org/10.2753/JOA0091-3367370406
• Lutz, R. J. (1985). Affective and cognitive antecedents of attitude toward the ad: A conceptual framework. In L. F. Alwitt & A. A. Mitchell (Eds.), Psychological Processes and Advertising Effects: Theory, Research, and Application (pp. 45–63). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• MacKenzie, S. B., Lutz, R. J., & Belch, G. E. (1986). The role of attitude toward the ad as a mediator of advertising effectiveness: A test of competing explanations. Journal of Marketing Research, 23(2), 130–143. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224378602300205
• Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric Theory (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill.
• Smith, R. E., MacKenzie, S. B., Yang, X., Buchholz, L. M., & Darley, W. K. (2007). Modeling the determinants and effects of creativity in advertising. Marketing Science, 26(6), 819–833. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.1070.0272
• Von Restorff, H. (1933). Über die Wirkung von Bereichsbildungen im Spurenfeld (Untersuchungen zur Induktionswirkung im Gedächtnis). Psychologische Forschung, 18(1), 299–342. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02409636

13. Items of the Scale