Ad Formats: Using Interstitials for your ad campaigns

ExoClick’ s proprietary ad network platform offers several different ad formats and each one can be exploited to reach your target market. In this ExoClick blog post we are going to take a look in more detail at the ‘interstitial’ to see how you can increase click thru rates using interstitials for your ad campaigns.

What the hell is an interstitial?
It is a pop up or a full page ad that loads between page views on a website, mobile site or app. It appears within the normal flow of the channel’s editorial content structure. Say you click on an article to view on a website and just before the article is shown to you, an interstitial ad appears, you have the option to read the ad, or close it and move onto the article you want to see.

Mobile applications, especially games use them while you are waiting for the game to load, they use them to inform you about new games, upsell gaming tools, social marketing pushes, etc or they are available to third parties like ExoClick who broker them to advertisers so they can promote their services or products in the interstitial ad space.

For publishers the interstitial is used in the sense of filling ‘dead space’ and is a prime ad spot for publishers to maximise ad space on their platform.

Advantages

So what are the advantages of using the interstitial for advertisers? According to ad industry insiders interstitials have:

• High visual impact because they can use video, rich media or be static creatives
• They are a large ad format offering advertisers more space to engage their audience and encourage interaction leading to higher click through rates
• They offer 100% of the page real estate for a brief time and your interstitial could be the first impression of the day a user sees

How to use Interstitials for your ad campaigns: 10 tips to run a successful campaign
The key to a successful interstitial ad campaign depends on the creative that you use. Here are some tips to ensure you get maximum click thrus on your interstitial ad…

1. Contextual – Make your interstitial contextually relevant to the destination channel otherwise the engagement and click levels will be reduced, thanks to ExoClick’s targeting feature you can ensure that this happens.

2. Entertain – Remember that an interstitial is stopping them for a few seconds from seeing what they are actually looking for, so you need to give value to your ad. Make it entertaining, make it complement what they are waiting for or distract them in a positive way to think “Now that’s caught my eye, it looks interesting and I want to investigate further…”

3. Free – Although price plays an important role in getting a customer to buy, tempt them with something free in the ad. That magic 4 letter word is powerful! Maybe your service is free to sign up to, or you are offering a free trial, or your product is a freemium model. Tell them prominantly in your ad that they are going to recieve something of value for FREE to get them to click through.

4. Brand Power – If you are pushing a well known brand tell them with a logo on the ad, if you have a new product but it is “from the creators of…” a successful product, include it. A well know brand is an excellent click thru gateway if you target it at a demographic that knows and loves that brand.

5. Be Memorable – Make sure you stand out and be visually impactful.  Use video, animation, sound or colourful artwork and target the demographic you want to impress.

6. Action! – Use a call to action to get them to investigate more, triggers like “Check it out!”, “Download Now!”, “Get it now!”, “Install”, etc.

7. Don’t Improvise – If you are briefing a creative to come up with your ad campaign or even if you are designing it yourself, create a clear brief first. The goal is to sell, not to show off 3D models or cool effects. Your ideal ad creative should simple, impactful and not overcrowded.

8. Testing 123 – You don’t have to put all your eggs in one basket and use the same concept for your interstitial campaign, try out different creatives and see what is working, what is converting, pitch different concepts at different territories targeting cultural differences, then using ExoClick campaign statistics hone in on what is successful. Test different colours, layouts, calls to action, characters and even logos, until you find the version with the best conversion rate and that’s delivering you the best results.

9. Traffic – You can have the best advertising creative in the world, but if you’re not getting click thrus maybe you aren’t targeting the right traffic. Quality, targeted traffic is key here. Think about your target, what motivates them, what time are they most likely to be online, what niches are they into, what devices are they using, where will they see your ad on your chosen channel. ExoClick’s targeting features can help you here.

10. Don’t Overkill – Interstitials, by definition, deliver an interruptive experience that inevitably captures the user’s attention. It’s a powerful format and as such needs to be delivered sparingly in order to preserve a positive user experience.

We hope that this article has given you some tips on how to make an impact with interstitials.

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