Skipping the skippable: An empirical study with out‐of‐sample predictive relevance

Purpose This explanatory research aims to describe the factors that impact YouTube ad intrusiveness, value, and avoidance in light of psychological reactance theory. Research Design The research has a causal–predictive design. It describes the relationship between the construct with an underpinning theory. Data from a sample of 294 respondents were analyzed using partial least square structural equation modeling to test within sample explanatory power and out‐of‐sample prediction power. Findings The results show that informativeness does not significantly impact intrusiveness and ad avoidance. Entertainment has a negative direct and mediated impact on ad avoidance. Moreover, irritation was found to moderate the impact of informativeness on intrusiveness negatively. Importance–Performance Map Analysis revealed that entertainment lacks in performance despite being an essential factor. Besides explanatory power, the model has a moderate out‐of‐sample predictive relevance power. Practical Implications The relative importance of the entertainment and interactive impact of irritation with informativeness is established for the first time in this study. The new finding is a significant contribution to theory while leading to practical implications for the industry.