In the current online advertising ecosystem, described by users’ adaptation to ad clutter, an arousal stimulus might not be a sufficient condition to maintain viewers’ attention on advertising. This research contributes to the online advertising literature by investigating whether different arousal designs (one vs. two arousal peaks) should be used to enhance the effectiveness of online video ads (attitude toward the ad, ad recall, purchase intentions, and recommendations) depending on the kind of audience (active or captive). By means of three studies, this research tests a moderation effect proposing that using one arousal stimulus is more effective in non-skippable advertising, whereas introducing two arousal stimuli is more effective in skippable ads. First, a consumer neuroscience study was conducted to detect the arousal stimuli and design the different conditions. Second, an experimental study in a lab setting was carried out to test the hypotheses of our framework. Third, to extend the validity of the experimental study, a field study using Google AdWords was conducted. Our results indicate that the two arousal peaks design increases ad effectiveness in skippable contexts whereas the one arousal peak commercial is more effective in a non-skippable context. These findings agree with previous research which found that continuous consumer activation during the ad improves decoding in memory for active audiences compared to captive audiences (Belanche, Flavián, & Pérez Rueda 2017). In addition, an ad with two arousal peaks is more effective among millennials; whereas the one arousal peak ad is more effective among older users (nonmillennials). Our research contributes to better understand how to satisfy the different demands of different advertising audiences (Ha, 2017). Specifically, our findings suggest that advertising campaigns should not be used across formats and users carelessly, but ad design needs to be adapted to the different ad formats and kind of audiences.