Advertising and Brand Attitudes: Evidence from 575 Brands over Five Years

Little is known about how different types of advertising affect brand attitudes. We investigate the relationships between three brand attitude variables (perceived quality, perceived value and recent satisfaction) and three types of advertising (national traditional, local traditional and digital). The data represent ten million brand attitude surveys and $264 billion spent on ads by 575 regular advertisers over a five-year period, approximately 37% of all ad spend measured between 2008 and 2012. Inclusion of brand/quarter fixed effects and industry/week fixed effects brings parameter estimates closer to expectations without major reductions in estimation precision. The findings indicate that (i) national traditional ads increase perceived quality, perceived value, and recent satisfaction; (ii) local traditional ads increase perceived quality and perceived value; (iii) digital ads increase perceived value; and (iv) competitor ad effects are generally negative.