Google Finally Cracks Down on Interstitial Mobile App Ads
I know hate is a strong word, but I actually hate interstitial ads and, like most other users, whenever I see one, I simply leave the website I'm visiting and stop browsing it from my mobile. You don't know what an interstitial ad is? I'm sure you do, but you probably didn't know it was called this way. It's that annoying advertisement that takes up the entire screen of your mobile device (stopping you from your normal activity) in order to tell you to install a certain app. Because it forces the user to react, a lot of sites use this kind of advertising, but the results might not be as beneficial as they believe them to be.
Google seems to have caught on about just how annoying these interstitial ads are and has decided to permanently stop using them for its Google+ app. The Mountain View-based company performed a study on the matter and found out that approximately 9% of those who saw the ad pressed the "Get App" button (voluntarily or not), while around 69% abandoned the page altogether. When they replaced the full-screen advertisement with a less intrusive banner, the active users on the mobile website increased by 17% while the app installation numbers remained pretty much the same. As a result, David Morell (a software engineer at Google+) wrote in a recent blog post: "We decided to permanently retire the interstitial. [..] We believe that the increase in users on our product makes this a net positive change.” The IT giant hopes that other mobile sites will follow their lead and reconsider using interstitial ads.
To read Mr. Morell's entire post click on this link.
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