Interstitial webpage
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On the World Wide Web, interstitials are web pages displayed before or after an expected content page, often to display advertisements or confirm the user's age (prior to showing age-restricted material). Most interstitial advertisements are delivered by an ad server.
Some people take issue with the use of such pages to present online advertising before allowing users to see the content they were trying to access.[1] Less controversial uses of interstitial pages include introducing another page or site before directing the user to proceed; or alerting the user that the next page requires a login, or has some other requirement which the user should know about before proceeding.
Meaning of interstitial
In this context, interstitial is used in the sense of “in between”. The interstitial web page sits between a referenced page and the page which references it—hence it is in between two pages. This is distinct from a page which simply links directly to another, in that the interstitial page serves only to provide extra information to a user during the act of navigating from one page to the next.
In digital marketing, the term “interstitial” is often used in the sense of “interstitial advertising”, rather than “interstitial webpage”. In some cases, this may lead to confusion because interstitial ads are not always served on interstitial webpages. According to a standard advanced by the IAB, an interstitial (also known as a between-the-page ad) can either be displayed on a separate webpage, or appear briefly as an overlay on the target page[2]. Moreover, mobile advertising guidelines created by the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) include in-app interstitial ads, that are integrated into applications, rather than web pages[3].
Circumvention
Many interstitial pages are circumvented by NoScript and AdBlock.
References
- ^ http://modernl.com/article/ethical-blogging-101 Modern Life: Ethical Blogging 101
- ^ http://www.iab.net/displayguidelines
- ^ http://www.mmaglobal.com/files/mobileadvertising.pdf
See also
- Pop-up ad
- Adobe Flash, a technology similarly in its application for online advertising.
- AdBlock, a tool to prevent the display of online advertisements
- Ad server, the technology that delivers most online advertisements
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