While several studies have delved into dissecting the power of digital advertising on consumers’ perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors toward brands, there has been limited research exploring whether digital advertisements can affect users’ preference for one media platform over another. Using media system dependency theory, this study fills this under-researched gap by examining the extent to which advertising content can influence consumers’ social media preferences via their perceived emotional and functional values of the targeted social media platform. A quantitative survey with 737 Vietnamese social media users was conducted and structured equation modeling was tested using IBM SPSS 28 with the Process Plug-in. The results confirm that advertising content can facilitate customers’ positive perception of both functional and emotional values that the social media platform can offer, thus leading to users’ preference for the social media platform. However, there is no moderating effect of gender and location on the effects of advertising content on perceived values. The study highlights the importance of digital advertising content in shaping customer preferences for social platforms. The research extends insights into the operations of digital advertising within social media in the emerging economy of Vietnam. Practically, the findings suggest marketers and advertisers should optimize their advertising content to resonate with different emotional and functional values of the platform, thus increasing customer preferences of the social media platform they want to engage with their targeted customers.