Abstract
This paper investigates the impact of program-elicited affective valence formed at different levels of cognitive appraisal on the processing and evaluation of embedded advertisements. The results indicate that at lower levels of cognitive appraisal, affective valence of the program has no impact on ad evaluations or processing. However, at higher levels of cognitive appraisal, the target ad is less effective in the negative program compared to the positive program. Thought-responses indicate that different processing mechanisms may be operating in the different program contexts.