The Effects of Advertising Types and Message Strategies in YouTube Content on Consumer Responses: A Scenario-Based Experiment

The rapid growth of video content consumption, particularly on YouTube, has positioned the platform as a central channel for digital marketing. However, increased ad frequency and shifts in YouTube’s advertising strategy have triggered user dissatisfaction, leading many to skip ads or subscribe to YouTube Premium. In response, advertisers are increasingly adopting content-integrated formats such as indirect and direct advertising. Despite this trend, empirical research on the effectiveness of content-utilized advertising remains limited. Grounded in Dual Process Theory (DPT), this study experimentally examines how advertising type (indirect vs. direct) and message strategy (emotional vs. informational) influence consumer responses, specifically product preference and purchase intention. The findings reveal that while the main effects of advertising type and message strategy are limited, their interaction has a significant impact on consumer responses. These results suggest that cognitive congruence between advertising form and message strategy can enhance consumer responses. This study offers practical implications for marketers seeking to optimize YouTube-based content advertising by aligning message types with ad formats to match consumers’ cognitive processing modes.