Interstitials – a new player in digital advertising

By Ninna Lauridsen | Jul 23 2015 | Insights

Originally posted by visiolab.

The introduction of digital advertising has completely changed the media market. Endless publications and firms are driven by income from ads and it’s most definitely here to stay. The traditional standard banner ads are notorious for a low performance and have spun some doubt concerning whether this way of advertising creates any significant results. Apart from experiencing a low conversion rate, many argue the actual clicks tend to be accidental. Historical data puts traditional banner ads conversion rate at a critical low of around 0.1%. This translates into a single click per 1000 visitors.


Publications are highly dependent on their ad revenue and therefore always strive toward the best possible advertising solution. When these publications became a digital product, it allowed for new forms of advertising. It created the opportunity to add content to the digital newspaper (e-paper), which were not part of the printed newspaper. This became the start of the interstitial.

Interstitials have been used by media houses in several countries but have yet to be adopted as a standard across publications. However, enough publications have embraced them as an alternative to regular advertising options and found them to be beneficial for both media houses and advertisers.

The graph below depicts the conversion rate for an interstitial compared to a traditional banner ad.

interstitials_new_player_in_digital_advertising

The interstitial conversion rate is significantly higher than a traditional banner ad. An interstitial will always take up an entire page in a publication and will therefore generally speaking obtain a better conversion rate. Even when taking this aspect into account, an average conversion rate of 3.45% is still exceptionally high. This proves a potentially underutilized investment in digital advertising in publications. Where traditional ads might have a low performance, interstitials in publications can still provide a high performance and create a substantial return on investment for both media title and advertiser.

The post is based on data from all of media houses using Visiolink’s digital solutions.

Want more statistics on reader behavior? Download the User Survey Benchmark Report 2015 on e-paper reading behavior

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Ninna Lauridsen

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Ninna Lauridsen