Withthe development of the internet, global brands' advertising campaigns can nowreach customers all over the world who use social media. To help more viewersunderstand the content, more and more video ads are being added that are notonly local language subtitled but also English subtitled. However, little isknown about how foreign-language subtitles influence consumer behavior in adigital context. The purpose of this research is to find out how non-nativelanguage consumers react to foreign-language subtitles on video advertisements.Three subtitle conditions are used in this study to compare consumer reactionsto subtitled video ads in Japan (Japanese subtitled group, English subtitledgroup, and both languages subtitled group) with a sample of college students(n=370). The findings revealed that there isno significant difference in attitudes toward the advertisement and the brandamong the three groups. However, when it came to ad entertainment, the Japanesesubtitled group had more positive attitudes than the English subtitled group. Thefindings predict the presence of subtitles in themother tongue produced a more entertaining feeling from the content in certain condition,when consumers are with a low level of the English proficiency.

In Japan, more and more video ads with same-language subtitles onwebsites and social media are viewed by not only native speakers but also non-nativespeakers. So many studies have revealed the same-language subtitles effects ineducational contexts, however, little is known about the effects of thesame-language subtitles in advertising contexts. This study reveals theperspective of non-native Japanese speakers toward the subtitled video ads inJapanese. Depth interviews were conducted among Chinese participants in Japan, whosemother language is not Japanese, but with advanced level of Japanese. Accordingto the results, it turned out same-language subtitles can be expected to enhancead content comprehension and the engagement of the video ads. When the ads withsame-language subtitles are highly relevant to viewers, the attitudes toward thead and the brand could be positively influenced. Moreover, adding subtitlescould draw viewers’ attention to the video ads which are low relevant to theviewers themselves. During this situation, the quality of the visual aspect ofthe subtitles (such as font, size, the display position) and how easilysubtitles could be decoded can influence the attitudes toward the ad and thebrand. However, when the ad content is difficult to understand or the visualquality of subtitles is low, it is difficult to keep viewers’ attention.This study contributes to the advertisers who are making video adstargeting not only local people but also non-native speakers.