The effect of emotion in thumbnails and titles of video clips on pre-roll advertising effectiveness

• The surrounding elements of video clips affect pre-roll advertising effectiveness. • Negative valence of thumbnail images decreases pre-roll advertising effectiveness. • Negative valence of title texts increases pre-roll advertising effectiveness. • Emoticons moderate the effects of thumbnail images and title texts. • Machine learning-based and lexicon-based techniques are adopted. Despite the proliferation of pre-roll advertising, there is minimal research on the effects of surrounding elements of video clips – such as thumbnail images, title texts, and emoticons – on pre-roll advertising effectiveness. Drawing from emotion theories and dual coding theory, we propose that valence in thumbnail images and in title texts have different effects on pre-roll advertising effectiveness, and the effects are differently moderated by emoticons in video title texts. Analyses of behavioral data on video clips and pre-roll advertisement show that negative valence in thumbnail images has a negative effect on pre-roll advertising effectiveness whereas negative valence in title texts has a positive effect on pre-roll advertising effectiveness. We further find that emoticons moderate the effects of positive and negative valence in both thumbnail images and title texts. Our findings make theoretical contributions, and provide practical insights for advertisers, video clip providers, and online video platform managers.