Skip or not to skip: Impact of empathy and ad length on viewers’ ad-skipping behaviors on the internet

Abstract

This exploratory research paper examines how viewers’ empathy toward the spokesperson in a skippable, in-stream advertisement influence their skipping behaviors. Based on the emotional empathy theory (Batson et al. 1997), the current study predicted that the heightened empathy induced by the spokesperson in the ad may make it difficult for viewers to avoid (i.e., skip) the person to whom they empathize in the ad. Further, the longer the exposure to the spokesperson in the ad, the higher the level of empathy with the spokesperson, the better the ad-effectiveness (Escalas and Stern 2003). Results are three-fold. First, viewers’ empathy with spokesperson in the ad mediated the effect of the ad length on skipping likelihood. The longer the ad the higher the empathy, resulting in less likelihood of skipping ad (−.99 < CI < −.01, b = −.50, z = −1.98, p =.04). Second, empathy with spokesperson in the ad did not significantly mediate the effect of the ad length on viewing duration and on the click-through rate. The results provide initial evidence that empathy may be effective in reducing likelihood of viewers’ ad-skipping.