Forced Attention, Fragile Loyalty: Inside the Impact of Non-Skippable Advertising on YouTube

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Non-skippable advertising represents a controversial yet essential monetization strategy for video streaming platforms. This study examines how perceived intrusiveness of non-skippable YouTube ads affects platform loyalty, integrating the Stimulus-Organism-Response framework, Flow Theory, and Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM). Using a scenario-based experimental survey of 201 YouTube users analyzed via partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), the findings reveal that ad intrusiveness directly increases irritation, reduces perceived platform value and viewer engagement, and weakens loyalty. Notably, irritation shows no direct loyalty effect, whereas perceived value and engagement emerge as strong positive loyalty drivers, highlighting platform experience dominance over ad-level affect. Ad skepticism negatively moderates the intrusiveness-irritation link while positively moderating the intrusiveness-value relationship, but exerts no significant effect on engagement. These results reposition non-skippable ads as strategic platform design decisions that require careful balancing of revenue retention.