Intentional Viewing of Skippable Ads on YouTube: An Exploratory Study

Individuals usually consider ads something that interferes with their intended media use, and technological development in recent years has made it easier to avoid ads than before. However, on digital video-sharing platforms such as YouTube, they sometimes choose to view ads in order to support content creators, even if the ads are not relevant to them and they can easily avoid them by clicking on the ‘skip ad’ button. To explore this phenomenon, an online survey with YouTube users in the US (N=281) was conducted. The results showed that intentional ad-viewing as a way of supporting content creators does exist. The results also indicate that individuals who are older, frequently read comments attached to videos, and have experience of making money off their videos are more likely to watch or not to skip ads. This study provides insights about ad-viewing behavior, especially intentional ad-viewing, by shedding light on the motivation of supporting content creators, which is unique on digital video-sharing platforms.