Google has finally realized that interstitial ads are not helpful in promoting its business, and it will be doing away with its interstitials, at least in some occasions.
As perhaps many an Internet user must have known since the beginning of time, interstitial ads are annoying, intrusive and most often leads people to just abandon the website altogether. In one study conducted by Google in July last year, the Internet search firm has confirmed what many of us have known all along.
Following smaller internal studies conducted by Google's employees showing interstitials offered "poor experiences," Google finally decided to conduct a wider study of users' behavior when presented with an interstitial ad, or a full-screen ad that displays over the entire mobile site.
The study, which was limited to the Google+ app for Android and iOS, shows a whopping majority of users, or 69 percent, abandoned the Google+ mobile website when presented with an interstitial urging them to download the Google+ app instead. On the other hand, 9 percent of users decided to tap the Get App button.
In online advertising terms, a 9 percent clickthrough rate is a pretty substantial number, but even Google says some of the users did not follow through with downloading and installing the app. Some others also had the app installed already, which might account for a huge part of this group of users, since the Google+ app is already preinstalled in many Android phones.
In place of interstitials, Google decided to use what it calls "smart app banners," or much less annoying banner ads, to see how users would respond compared with the intrusive ads. Google says active Google+ users increased by 17 percent, while the number of app installs on iOS dropped by 2 percent, a number that Google says is relatively insignificant. Google is not reporting on Android installs as, again, the Google+ app is found in most Android devices at launch.
"Based on these results, we decided to permanently retire the interstitial," says David Morell, software engineer at Google+. "We believe that the increase in users on our product makes this a net positive change, and we are sharing this with the hope that you will reconsider the use of promotional interstitials. Let's remove friction and make the mobile web more useful and usable!"
However, interstitials will remain for some of Google's services. As TechCrunch reports, full-screen ads still appear on Google's mobile site when accessing Gmail.
Photo: Jason Howie | Flickr
