What are the best practices for ad monetization through Interstitials?

We are showing interstitials only to users who don't interact with rewarded videos or IAP for xx minutes. We have been testing different frequency and how it affects retention (while also paying attention to potential bad reviews connected to intrusive ads), and the results have been quite different between android and iOS users.

We are also mindful about where the interstitials are placed, so that they are shown for example after a race (or game is a realtime multiplayer race), to not interrupt the core gameplay.

Interstitials are full-screen ads which are initiated by the app at different intervals.

A good strategy for Interstitials helps improve ad LTV which will helps in User Acquisition (UA) scaling. 

Though these ads have high impression rates they become intrusive if their frequency and placements are not well planned. Many app publishers consider compromising user experience for the sake of additional ad revenue. They think that higher the number of clicks, higher will be the ad revenue. This not only results in user churn & bad reviews but also in reduction of eCPM rates due to the low quality of clicks.

Higher the quality of clicks better will be the ad monetization. The objective here is to not get accidental clicks but to get quality clicks.

Following are some of the best practices in general. Pick the best practices which will work for you based on the nature of your app and the objectives.

Some Dos

• Interstitials should be displayed at natural pause or breakpoints in the app.

• Show them at high engagement points. 

• Show interstitials after the action has been completed and never in between the actions.

• Show them after the user engages with the app for some time. Let them have an interruption-free app experience before seeing an interstitial.

• Decide interstitial ads strategy based on user segmentation. You can consider showing more ads to non-paying users and in certain geos where ad engagement is high.

• Add a ‘close button’ to close the ad and make it clearly visible. Users must have an option to close the ad if they don’t want to engage with it.

• Consider Geo-limited AB test to arrive at the right place for ad placements and their frequency before rolling it out to all users.

• Experiment different networks using ad mediation to chose the right combination of networks for interstitials.

• Go for lazy loading i.e. wait until the ad is needed and then load it. This will help in improving the fill rate.

• Test ad implementation thoroughly before rolling it out.

Some Don’ts

• Don’t show interstitials too frequently. The quality of clicks goes down due to this.

• Don’t show them as surprise elements! Users interacting with the app will be expecting something else to happen in the app.

• Don’t show them on app load, on app exit and after app minimizing.

• Don’t show them just before the user is about to click in the app.

• Don’t show an interstitial immediately after the user rejects to interact with a rewarded video ad.

• Don’t show an interstitial immediately after a rewarded video ad.

• Don’t show multiple interstitials in a row.