Due to the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic in Turkey in March 2020, people in Turkey stay at home and spend most of their time on digital media, in which advertisers try to catch their attention through several strategies, including creative message strategies. The main purpose of this study is to identify the creative message strategies of brands in their YouTube advertisements, listed by Google as the most creative ads in Turkey on YouTube Ads Leaderboard during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. In line with this purpose, this study content-analyzes 100 YouTube ads of brands in terms of creative message strategies through the application of Taylor's Six-Segment Message Strategy Wheel model on MAXQDA 2020 analysis program. The findings reveal that the most used strategy in the most watched creative YouTube ads during COVID-19 pandemic is the combined message strategy, followed by transformational (including mostly the 'social' strategy) and informational (including mostly the 'ration' strategy) message strategies, and that these ads mostly avoided using COVID-19 theme in their messages. The results offer suggestions for both present and future practitioners and researchers.