Attitude towards advertising the views of UK and US Millennials

Adopting an institutional theory perspective, this paper explores and compares the attitudes of late-Millennial University students toward advertising’s economic, social, and ethical features and consequences in the United Kingdom and the United States. Tracking and explaining such attitudes are important because Millennials are a large generational cohort, and they are the first to be targeted with digital advertising throughout their entire lives. Their views matter as studies indicate attitudes toward advertising in general are related to message processing, favourable brand attitudes, as well as attitudes toward specific ads and campaigns. More important, negative attitudes toward advertising could lead to problems for marketers in the form of support for more restrictive advertising regulations. Data collection took the form of an online survey of late-Millennial students at two universities, one in the UK and one in the US. Findings offer an update to the research literature on attitudes toward advertising, indicating that attitudes are most negative overall toward its truthfulness. On the other hand, respondents substantially agree that advertising is essential to economic prosperity, and while attitudes are slightly more favourable toward more government regulation of advertising among UK Millennials, they are mainly neutral in both countries.