Why does the weight of current empirical evidence indicate little diff
erence in the persuasiveness of comparative and noncomparative adverti
sing? One explanation explored in this research is that the measures c
ommonly used for assessing the persuasive impact of comparative advert
ising are limited in their ability to capture the unique effects that
may arise from this type of advertising, Measures that capture relativ
e impressions of the advertised and comparison brands are found to be
far more sensitive in detecting persuasion effects of comparative adve
rtising. Moreover, the appropriateness of different types of relative
measures is shown to depend on the correspondence between the encoding
frame adopted during ad processing and the measure's response frame.