Attitude Toward the Ad (Novelty) (ATAN)

1. Abstract

The Attitude Toward the Ad (Novelty) (ATAN) scale is a psychometric instrument designed to evaluate consumer perceptions of creative distinctiveness, originality, and unconventional execution in promotional communications. Developed and validated by Daniel A. Sheinin, Sajeev Varki, and Christy Ashley (2011), the instrument operationalizes the creative departure dimension of advertising evaluation. Across empirical marketing, advertising psychology, and consumer behavior research, evaluating how advertisements deviate from standard industry conventions is essential for predicting cognitive elaboration, affective orientation, and downstream brand judgments. The full instrument consists of six items capturing the degree to which an advertisement is perceived as novel, original, rule-breaking, memorable, visually interesting, and generally engaging. Responses are captured via a 7-point response format (ranging from 1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree, or an equivalent 7-point semantic differential scale). In addition to the comprehensive six-item configuration, Sheinin, Varki, and Ashley (2011) validated a parsimonious three-item short form (comprising items 1, 2, and 4) that isolates the structural core of ad novelty without conflating visual interest and memorability. Psychometric testing across multiple experimental studies demonstrates high internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients consistently exceeding .85 across diverse product categories and execution types. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses establish unidimensionality, robust convergent validity through strong positive associations with ad divergence and ad creativity constructs, and discriminant validity against constructs such as message usefulness, brand familiarity, and general brand attitude. By isolating novelty from informational utility, the ATAN scale provides empirical researchers and marketing practitioners with a rigorous measurement tool to determine when, how, and for whom unconventional advertising strategies yield positive brand evaluations.

2. Keywords

Attitude Toward the Ad, ad novelty, creative advertising, advertising effectiveness, originality, message usefulness, consumer psychology, psychometrics, scale validation, divergence

3. Authors

The Attitude Toward the Ad (Novelty) (ATAN) scale was conceptualized, operationalized, and empirically validated by a team of leading scholars in marketing and consumer psychology:

• Daniel A. Sheinin, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing at the College of Business, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA. Dr. Sheinin specializes in brand management, advertising strategy, new product adoption, and consumer evaluation processes under conditions of uncertainty and innovation.
• Sajeev Varki, Ph.D. — Associate Professor of Marketing at the Miami Herbert Business School, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA. Dr. Varki’s research interests center on quantitative modeling, customer satisfaction, psychometric scale development, and research methodology in consumer decision-making.
• Christy Ashley, Ph.D. — Professor of Marketing and Associate Dean at the College of Business, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA. Dr. Ashley focuses on customer experience management, creative marketing communications, customer engagement, and emotional consumer-brand relationships.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Attitude Toward the Ad (Novelty) scale is to measure consumer perceptions of an advertisement’s originality, unconventionality, and creative departure from standard advertising norms. Within advertising theory and consumer behavior, advertising creativity has historically been conceptualized as a multidimensional phenomenon consisting of two principal facets: divergence (novelty, originality, or unexpectedness) and relevance (meaningfulness, utility, or appropriateness). Prior to the publication of the ATAN scale by Sheinin, Varki, and Ashley (2011), existing measures often conflated novelty with overall positive valence, aesthetic appreciation, or informational clarity, making it difficult for researchers to isolate the specific causal impact of creative deviation on consumer processing.

The theoretical rationale for creating a dedicated novelty scale rests on the recognition that novelty serves as an independent cognitive catalyst. When consumers encounter an advertisement that breaks rules, behaves unconventionally, or presents unexpected visual and textual stimuli, it disrupts schematic expectations. This violation of expectation triggers heightened attentional orientation and initiates exploratory cognitive processing. However, novelty is double-edged: unconventional executions can either captivate the consumer or generate confusion and skepticism. Sheinin and colleagues established the ATAN scale specifically to investigate the differential and interactive effects of ad novelty and message usefulness on brand judgments.

In academic research, the ATAN scale serves as a foundational measurement instrument for experimental designs examining advertising schemas, persuasion heuristics, cognitive load, and dual-process models such as the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM). Researchers employ the scale as a manipulation check to verify whether experimental stimuli intended to be creative or non-traditional successfully evoke feelings of novelty in laboratory and field settings. Furthermore, it functions as an explanatory mediator, elucidating the psychological path through which creative executions stimulate ad memorability and subsequent brand consideration.

In applied marketing and creative testing, the scale provides brand managers, copywriters, and creative agencies with a standardized diagnostic tool. During pre-testing, creative concepts can be evaluated on the ATAN scale alongside utilitarian measures to ensure that creative risk-taking translates into perceived originality without overshadowing product benefits. The presence of both a 6-item comprehensive configuration and an abbreviated 3-item configuration makes the instrument adaptable for long-form omnibus tracking studies as well as high-speed digital pre-testing environments.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct captured by the ATAN scale is perceived ad novelty, defined as the subjective consumer perception that an advertising execution departs from existing conventions, violates standard category expectations, and introduces an original, unexpected creative execution. Rather than reflecting an objective property of the stimulus, novelty represents an interactive cognitive appraisal occurring at the intersection between the consumer’s established schema for advertising and the incoming structural and thematic features of the advertisement.

Core Dimensions of the Construct

Although the ATAN operates psychometrically as a unified unidimensional construct, it encompasses several distinct cognitive and experiential facets that collectively constitute the perception of novelty:

• Originality and Uniqueness: At the center of the novelty construct is the judgment that the execution possesses a quality of unprecedented invention. Reflected in items such as “This ad is novel” and “This ad is original,” this dimension represents the consumer’s realization that they have not encountered an identical or highly similar execution previously within that product category. It taps into the cognitive experience of freshness and uniqueness.
• Convention Violation (Rule-Breaking): A critical theoretical marker of creative divergence is the deliberate contravention of established norms, captured directly by “This ad breaks advertising rules.” In consumer psychology, advertising rules represent informal cognitive scripts regarding how commercials or print ads “ought” to be structured (e.g., presenting a clear problem-solution format, standard logo placements, or typical testimonial framing). When an advertisement subverts these structural expectations, consumers classify it as deviant or rule-breaking, which amplifies cognitive processing.
• Cognitive Salience and Memorability: Highly novel stimuli stimulate elevated levels of autonomic arousal and episodic encoding. Because novel stimuli resist immediate categorization within preexisting mental folders, the perceptual system allocates greater working memory resources to interpret them. This is operationalized via the belief that “This ad will be remembered.” The consumer intuitively predicts that the unique characteristics of the ad will leave an enduring memory trace.
• Sensory and Visual Distinctiveness: Novelty frequently manifests through structural aesthetic departures, including non-traditional typography, surrealistic imagery, unusual color grading, or complex camera angles. Captured by “This ad is visually interesting” and “This ad is interesting,” these items reflect the affective and perceptual intrigue evoked by the advertisement’s form. Visual interest draws the consumer’s gaze and holds visual fixation, providing the sensory substrate for novelty appraisal.

The Tripartite Short-Form Construct

In Study 3 of the original monograph, Sheinin et al. (2011) utilized a refined three-item sub-specification consisting of items 1 (novel), 2 (original), and 4 (will be remembered). This targeted constellation isolates the pure cognitive evaluation of novelty and its immediate memorial implication while eliminating items focused solely on visual aesthetics or general interest (items 5 and 6) and explicit rule-breaking (item 3). This shorter configuration demonstrates that the central construct functions as a coherent appraisal of innovative memorability.

6. Theoretical Framework

The Attitude Toward the Ad (Novelty) scale is grounded in foundational theories of cognitive psychology, information processing, and communication science. Three primary frameworks provide the theoretical architecture supporting the construct: Schema Congruity Theory, the Divergence-Relevance Paradigm of Advertising Creativity, and Dual-Process Theories of Persuasion.

Schema Congruity Theory

Pioneered by Mandler (1982) and extensively applied to marketing by Meyers-Levy and Tybout (1989), Schema Congruity Theory posits that individuals possess structured cognitive frameworks—schemas—representing generalized knowledge about objects, events, and media formats. When incoming information is completely schema-congruent, it is processed smoothly and automatically, generating minimal cognitive arousal or affective response. Conversely, severe schema incongruity often leads to negative frustration and rejection due to an inability to make sense of the stimulus.

The ATAN scale measures the cognitive detection of moderate to high schema incongruity. A novel advertisement deliberately deviates from category advertising norms, triggering an initial cognitive mismatch. According to Mandler’s framework, resolving this moderate incongruity generates cognitive pleasure, intellectual stimulation, and heightened attentional focus, leading to favorable consumer attitudes. If the advertisement is simply novel without offering useful product information, the incongruity may remain unresolved, leading to positive attitudes toward the execution itself but negligible or negative downstream brand judgments—a core finding demonstrated by Sheinin et al. (2011).

The Divergence-Relevance Model

Within advertising scholarship, Robert E. Smith and colleagues (e.g., Smith, MacKenzie, Yang, Buchholz, & Darley, 2007) established that creative advertising requires both divergence (novelty, flexibility, elaboration, synthesis, artistic value) and relevance (meaningfulness and usefulness). The ATAN scale isolates and operationalizes the divergence dimension, specifically its originality and rule-breaking facets. By separating novelty from message usefulness (relevance), the theoretical framework allows researchers to test orthogonal interactions between execution creativity and informational value.

Dual-Process Models: ELM and Heuristic Processing

According to the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986), persuasion can occur through the central route (careful, effortful consideration of substantive arguments) or the peripheral route (reliance on superficial cues and heuristics). Novelty serves a dual role within this framework:

1. Novelty as an Attentional Gatekeeper: By arresting perceptual habituation, perceived novelty motivates consumers to shift from passive, automatic browsing to active, central processing of the advertising claims.
2. Novelty as a Peripheral Cue: In low-involvement processing conditions, novelty can function as an independent heuristic cue. Consumers may infer that a brand capable of producing a cutting-edge, rule-breaking advertisement must be innovative, technologically superior, or culturally relevant, independent of the actual product claims presented.

7. Validity

The psychometric validity of the ATAN scale has been established across multiple experimental studies utilizing distinct stimuli, media modalities, and product classifications (Sheinin, Varki, & Ashley, 2011).

Construct and Content Validity

Content validity was ensured during scale generation by synthesizing established literature on advertising creativity, cognitive psychology, and visual design. The selected items systematically sample the conceptual domain of novelty: conceptual originality (novel, original), norm violation (breaks rules), cognitive impact (will be remembered), and perceptual intrigue (visually interesting, interesting). Expert panels and pilot testing confirmed that these items comprehensively represent the novelty dimension of ad attitudes without confounding it with general affective liking (e.g., “I like this ad”) or utilitarian evaluation (e.g., “This ad is informative”).

Convergent Validity

Convergent validity was demonstrated by examining correlations between the ATAN scale and alternative measures of creative divergence and aesthetic engagement. Across validation studies, the ATAN scale correlated strongly and positively (r > .60, p < .001) with multi-item measures of ad creativity and divergence adapted from Smith et al. (2007). In addition, experimental conditions designed with high-divergence visual executions yielded statistically significant higher scores on the ATAN scale compared to standardized, conventional control advertisements (F-values consistently significant at p < .001), verifying that the instrument accurately captures true variations in stimulus novelty.

Discriminant Validity

A primary psychometric objective of Sheinin et al. (2011) was demonstrating discriminant validity between Ad Novelty and Message Usefulness. Message usefulness was assessed using items measuring whether the ad was informative, helpful, useful, and educational. Using Confirmatory Factor Analysis, a two-factor model specifying ad novelty and message usefulness as correlated but distinct latent constructs demonstrated superior fit over a single-factor unconstrained model across all experimental iterations (Δχ² significant at p < .001). The correlation between latent novelty and latent usefulness remained moderate to low (typically between r = .15 and r = .38), confirming that consumers independently evaluate an advertisement’s creative departure and its informational value.

Predictive and Nomological Validity

Nomological validity was verified through structural equation modeling and ANOVA testing evaluating the downstream consequences of perceived novelty on brand-related outcomes. In alignment with theoretical predictions:

• Ad novelty significantly interacted with message usefulness to determine brand judgments: when message usefulness was high, high ad novelty produced superior brand evaluations relative to low novelty executions.
• When message usefulness was low, high ad novelty occasionally provoked negative brand evaluations or failed to improve brand attitude, supporting the hypothesis that creative execution without substantive content can alienate consumers seeking diagnostic information.
• The three-item short form maintained identical predictive patterns relative to the six-item composite, confirming the robust nomological validity of both configurations.

8. Reliability

The ATAN scale demonstrates consistently high internal consistency reliability across varied empirical contexts, demographic cohorts, and experimental conditions.

Internal Consistency Metrics

In the primary investigations reported by Sheinin, Varki, and Ashley (2011), the internal consistency of the ATAN scale was assessed using Cronbach’s alpha (α) and composite reliability (CR):

• Study 1: The 6-item scale achieved an initial reliability coefficient of α = .88, indicating robust item homogeneity and minimal measurement error.
• Study 2: In a replication testing diverse creative advertising strategies across distinct consumer segments, the 6-item scale demonstrated an alpha coefficient of α = .89.
• Study 3 (Three-Item Abbreviated Form): The abbreviated 3-item version (items 1, 2, and 4) retained outstanding internal consistency, yielding α = .86. This confirmed that reducing the scale by 50% incurs negligible loss in measurement precision.

Item-Total Correlations and Inter-Item Consistency

Corrected item-total correlations across validation studies consistently exceeded .65, well above the conventional psychometric threshold of .40. Inter-item correlations among the core novelty indicators (items 1 and 2) typically ranged between .70 and .82, reflecting a strong common core. No individual item deletion resulted in an increase in Cronbach’s alpha, corroborating the complementary diagnostic contribution of each item to the overall scale score.

9. Factor Analysis

Extensive factor analytic procedures were executed by the scale developers to verify the structural integrity, dimensionality, and factor determinacy of the ATAN instrument.

Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA)

Initial validation began with exploratory factor analysis utilizing principal axis factoring and maximum likelihood estimation with oblique (Promax) rotation to accommodate latent intercorrelations. Across exploratory runs, the six items loaded cleanly onto a single dominant factor exhibiting an eigenvalue well exceeding 3.5, accounting for more than 65% of the total variance in the item battery. The scree plot clearly leveled off after the initial extraction, confirming the unidimensional nature of the creative departure construct.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA)

To confirm structural validity, confirmatory factor analyses were conducted using structural equation modeling software. The single-factor specification for the 6-item ATAN scale yielded excellent global goodness-of-fit indices across empirical samples:

• Comparative Fit Index (CFI): .97 to .99 (surpassing the standard ≥ .95 threshold for well-fitting models).
• Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI): .96 to .98.
• Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA): .042 to .058 (with 90% confidence intervals falling below the .08 cutoff).
• Standardized Root Mean Square Residual (SRMR): .025 to .035.

Standardized Factor Loadings

All six items exhibited substantial, statistically significant standardized factor loadings (p < .001) on the latent Ad Novelty construct:

• Item 1 (This ad is novel): Standardized loading λ ≈ .88
• Item 2 (This ad is original): Standardized loading λ ≈ .86
• Item 3 (This ad breaks advertising rules): Standardized loading λ ≈ .72
• Item 4 (This ad will be remembered): Standardized loading λ ≈ .78
• Item 5 (This ad is visually interesting): Standardized loading λ ≈ .74
• Item 6 (This ad is interesting): Standardized loading λ ≈ .75

For the three-item abbreviated version implemented in Study 3, the standardized factor loadings for items 1, 2, and 4 all exceeded .80, with an average variance extracted (AVE) exceeding .70, demonstrating robust convergent validity and latent construct purity.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

The specifications for administering and scoring the Attitude Toward the Ad (Novelty) scale are detailed below:

• Instrument Name: Attitude Toward the Ad (Novelty) (ATAN)
• Construct Assessed: Perceived advertising novelty, originality, rule-breaking, and creative distinctiveness
• Respondent Target Population: General consumers, adult experimental participants, and target audience segments for marketing communications
• Administration Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil questionnaire, online survey platform, or computer-assisted experimental interface
• Administration Time: Approximately 1 to 2 minutes for the full 6-item scale; under 45 seconds for the 3-item short form
• Item Count:
  • Full Scale: 6 items
  • Abbreviated Form (Study 3): 3 items (Items 1, 2, and 4)
• Response Scale: 7-point semantic differential scale (or Likert agreement scale from 1 = Strongly disagree to 7 = Strongly agree)
• Scoring Procedures:
  • All items are positively phrased; there are no reverse-scored items.
  • An overall Ad Novelty Score is computed by calculating the arithmetic mean of all completed items (sum of item scores divided by the number of items evaluated).
  • Possible composite scores range from 1.00 to 7.00, with higher scores reflecting greater perceived ad novelty, originality, and creative departure.
  • When deploying the 3-item short form, calculate the mean of items 1, 2, and 4.

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Attitude Toward the Ad (Novelty) scale was published in 2011 in the Journal of Advertising by Daniel A. Sheinin, Sajeev Varki, and Christy Ashley. The instrument is accessible in the public academic domain for non-commercial research, scholarly inquiry, and educational purposes without licensing fees, provided that appropriate scholarly attribution is accorded to the original authors and the publishing journal.

For commercial applications, syndicated market research testing, proprietary brand tracking, or reproduction within commercial diagnostic toolkits, permission should be secured from the copyright holder, the American Academy of Advertising (AAA), and the journal’s publisher, Taylor & Francis Group (formerly M.E. Sharpe). Inquiries regarding formal licensing or adaptations of the scale can be directed through Taylor & Francis’s permissions portal or via the corresponding author, Dr. Daniel A. Sheinin at the University of Rhode Island.

12. References

• Mandler, G. (1982). The structure of value: Accounting for taste. In M. S. Clark & S. T. Fiske (Eds.), Affect and Cognition: The 17th Annual Carnegie Symposium on Cognition (pp. 3–36). Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Meyers-Levy, J., & Tybout, A. M. (1989). Schema congruity as a basis for product evaluation. Journal of Consumer Research, 16(1), 39–54. https://doi.org/10.1086/209192
• Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The Elaboration Likelihood Model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0065-2601(08)60214-2
• Sheinin, D. A., Varki, S., & Ashley, C. (2011). The differential effect of ad novelty and message usefulness on brand judgments. Journal of Advertising, 40(3), 5–17. https://doi.org/10.2753/JOA0091-3367400301
• 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/10.1277/mksc.1070.0272

13. Items of the Scale