Comparative Television Advertising in the United States: A Thirty-Year Update

Abstract

“Strictly” comparative television commercials make explicit references to identifiable competitors, whereas “implied” ones make implicit comparisons to “ordinary brands” or other brands in general. This study assesses the frequency of comparative television advertising use in the United States and represents the literature's first longitudinal update for both products and services in more than three decades. Findings reveal (1) likely increases in the use of both strictly and implied comparative advertising and (2) the frequent use of a previously uninvestigated type, and (3) suggest today's advertisers attempt to avoid excessive intensity and negativity with their comparative advertising.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 9 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.