Bad UX of interstitial ads

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Bad UX of interstitial ads

robzilla

8:53 am on Feb 17, 2021 (gmt 0)

Anyone else find the UX of the interstitial ads severely lacking? Mostly on desktop because, for one, the cursor doesn't even change when I hover over the X to close it. Then when I click the X it's as though nothing happens so I'll often find myself clicking it several times to get rid of it. I suppose the target page doesn't start loading until you click the X, so a slow site will leave you hanging for a while, and there's no immediate feedback to indicate anything is happening at all. I hate it.

[edited by: engine at 11:06 am (utc) on Feb 17, 2021]
[edit reason] Edit reference stickymail [/edit]

JorgeV

3:18 pm on Feb 17, 2021 (gmt 0)

Hello,

I think there are still experimentation about the vignette ads on desktop, and yes, recently I came with the problem you are reporting .

For the moment, I am not minding too much. The number of impressions of such ads is so low, and their CTR so high (without apparent invalid clicks) that it seems not to be annoying people seeing them. May be Adsense is extremely well targeting them, and only showing them to people who have a high probability to be interested.

robzilla

4:27 pm on Feb 17, 2021 (gmt 0)

only showing them to people who have a high probability to be interested.

I'm not one of those people, I can tell you ;-) Still I see them quite often, but usually capped at once per site session.

I haven't tried them myself, only seen them as a user. They take over the whole page so I imagine the CTR is good, yes. I don't really think that's a good indicator of users not being annoyed by them, though. Pop-ups used to do quite well, too.

robzilla

9:32 am on Mar 4, 2021 (gmt 0)

Looks like they've now switched from the X button to close the ad to separate "Close" and "Open" buttons.

"Close" is obvious, but "Open" may confuse some users into thinking it will open the content they clicked rather than the ad's destination page.

Still no indication that anything is happening after clicking "Close" when the destination page takes some time to load.

So... still pretty bad.

ember

4:12 pm on Mar 6, 2021 (gmt 0)

Now it just says Open at the bottom and the X is back.

Niresh12495

4:39 am on Mar 7, 2021 (gmt 0)

I sometimes get blank screen on mobile with vignette ads, if i touch the X button placement (Not visible), It passes to the desired link.