Issue Summary
December 2025 (Vol. 65, Issue 4)

When Fast Music Makes Ads More Persuasive—and When It Doesn’t
Researchers in this study analyzed 26,025 real-world video ads and conducted three controlled experiments to uncover when music tempo meaningfully shapes advertising effectiveness. The authors find a clear interaction between tempo and regulatory focus. Fast-tempo music significantly increases purchase intentions and willingness to pay for promotion-focused ads, which emphasize positive gains, because it heightens time pressure and pushes consumers toward quicker, more heuristic decision-making. In contrast, tempo has no significant effect on prevention-focused ads, which trigger more systematic, detail-oriented processing that dampens the influence of music. The evidence shows that the tempo effect emerges only once music becomes sufficiently fast. The study also illustrates how fast music boosts willingness to pay in promotion-focused ads but not prevention-focused ones. Finally, the research confirms that this effect operates through a serial pathway of increased time pressure and heuristic processing—not arousal. The findings give advertisers a practical rule: pair fast music with gain-framed, promotion-oriented content to boost ad impact, and rely less on music when communicating risk avoidance or reassurance.