*6.4. Hypothesis 4: YouTube Advertising Has a Significant E*ff*ect on Behavioral Trends*

Table 12 provides the regression results with avoidance as the dependent variable. The result indicates that variation in masthead ads and display ads (banner) explained 4.2% of the variation in the avoidance behavior of Thai subjects at a significance level of 0.01 for these two independent variables. Thus, the independent variables that led to the most variation in avoidance behavior were display ads (banner) and mastheads.

<sup>\*</sup> Significant at the 0.05 level.


**Table 12.** Regression results (dependent variable = avoidance).

\*\* Significant at the 0.01 level.

This result shows that Thai subjects tended to avoid mastheads and display ads (banners) the most among all types of YouTube advertising. The results for the remaining independent variables imply that Thai subjects were consistent in their accepted level of advertising.

Table 13 reports the regression results with confrontation as the dependent variable. The result indicates that variation in mastheads, TrueView in-search ads, and non-skippable ads explained 5.9% of the variation in the confrontation behavior of Thai subjects at the 0.05 significance level for mastheads and at the 0.01 level for the two other independent variables. Thus, the independent variables that led to the most variation were TrueView in-search ads, non-skippable in-stream ads, and mastheads, from highest to lowest significance.


**Table 13.** Regression results (dependent variable = confrontation).

\*\* Significant at the 0.01 level; \* Significant at 0.05 level.

The result implies that Thai subjects tended to confront mastheads, TrueView in-search ads, and non-skippable in-stream ads. This means that they accepted watching these types of YouTube ads.

Note that mastheads were a special case: Thai subjects tended to both confront and avoid them. However, comparing significance levels revealed that Thai subjects tended to avoid more than confront mastheads since the former behavior was associated with a significance level of 0.01. These data are presented here as Table 14.

**Table 14.** Summary of the hypotheses.


#### **7. Conclusions**

The results indicate that Thai subjects using the desktop version of YouTube had low satisfaction with YouTube advertising, and the YouTube advertising type that subjects felt the most displeasure encountering was non-skippable in-stream ads. This was likely because it is the only kind of YouTube advertising on the desktop version of the website that users cannot avoid unless they install specific Web browser adds-on (i.e., extensions, such as AdBlock). Further, male subjects had lower satisfaction with YouTube advertising than female subjects. Demographic characteristic theories [6] argue that individuals with different demographic characteristics (such as gender, age, occupation, education, and so on) behave differently.

Avoidance or confrontation? In fact, the presented results indicated that subjects were more likely to avoid YouTube advertising than confront it. The most common way to avoid ads was waiting for five seconds and then skipping the ad, which is applicable to TrueView in-stream ads (video ads that play before the main video that the user intends to watch). Research on why people avoid advertising on the Internet has been conducted, and it was suggested in Reference [17] that the more that advertising interrupts the Internet user's activity, the more they avoid the advertising website. Some comments in subjects' responses to the questionnaire included, "I do not like YouTube advertising that waste[s] my time", "we can install an extension to block advertising", "advertising should be suitable with video", "YouTube advertising should not have non-skip[p]able in-stream ads because I cannot skip", and so on.

Riedl and Kenning's study found that perceived trustworthiness of Internet offers is affected by neurobiology [18]. Organizational trust can be divided into intra- and inter-organizational trust. Inter-organizational trust refers to the extent to which organizational members have a collectively held trust orientation towards the partner firm [19]. We have to emphasis on this point in the future study.

What should YouTube do? Understanding how IT impacts consumer behavior can serve as a critical foundation for businesses to identify and develop effective and sustainable marketing communication strategies [20]. To enhance user satisfaction, YouTube ought to improve its advertising format by providing a choice to users, such as monthly or yearly subscriptions to the website for an ad-free experience, or reducing non-skippable advertising on the website. Future work may need to consider other countries and apply a similar method for comparison with Thailand, as well as study avoidance behavior for other social media platforms, such as Instagram, Line, and Facebook.

**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, all authors; methodology, S.K.; software, Y.-T.H.; formal analysis and data extraction, S.K., Y.-T.H.; writing—original draft preparation, S.K.; writing—review and editing, S.-L.W.; visualization, Y.-T.H.; supervision, S.-L.W.

**Funding:** This research received no external funding.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

#### **References**


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