What Are Interscroller Ads? A Guide for Publishers

Digital publishers are constantly striving to strike the right balance between providing a great user experience and finding innovative ways to monetize their content.

Interscroller ads are the latest step in this direction.

They allow publishers and advertisers to insert interactive advertisements without disrupting the user’s experience. Not only does this result in greater user engagement with the ads, it also helps publishers rank their content higher on Google.

This is because Google has been continuously updating its algorithms to penalize intrusive content that hinders a users viewing experience. The most recent update, which kicks into effect from September 30, 2022, discourages the use of interstitial ads especially for mobile apps.

An interstitial ad is a pop-up ad that covers the full screen of your mobile device in between content breaks or upon visiting a new page.

Google’s latest algorithm update that targeted interstitial ads is great news for users tired of intrusive advertisements, but it forces advertisers and publishers to look for more creative advertising strategies that do not affect a user's online experience.

This is where interscroller ads come in.

In this article, we discuss what interscrollers are, how they benefit advertisers, and how to build an effective interscroller ad campaign.

What Are Interscroller Ads?

Interscroller ads are native-style ads that fit naturally within a page’s content breaks, appearing as a user scrolls through the content—unlike interstitial ads that cover the entire screen.

As the reader scrolls down the page, they see the ad gradually revealed underneath the content, and once 85% of the ad has been revealed it may snap out to occupy the whole screen.

However, unlike interstitial ads which require a user to either click on the ad, or navigate to a tiny close button located on a corner of the screen, interscrollers can simply be scrolled through to return to the main body of the content. The user’s reading experience isn’t disrupted by searching for the exit button.

Interscroller ads also align with the IAB Ads requirements.

Why Is Interscroller Advertising Important?

Interscroller advertising is designed with the user’s experience in mind.

Intrusive ads can not only drive away visitors from a web page, they can also dent the publisher’s credibility. Below are a few advantages interscroller ads have over other forms of on-page advertising:

With interscroller advertising, advertisers can subtly promote their brand without disrupting the user’s content consumption flow, creating positive brand recall value.
Interscroller advertising is mobile responsive. It optimizes the ad to fit the mobile web page content irrespective of ad size.
Being a native ad format, interscroller advertising matches the context of the content it is placed in, ensuring that the ads are relevant to the audience they are targeted at
Interscroller advertising introduces readers to the page’s promotional content without being as conspicuous as conventional display ads.

Benefits of Interscroller Ads

The interscroller format can be great for brands as well as publishers. Below we list some of the major benefits interscroller advertising provides to marketers and publishers:

Natural Looking Ads

Interscroller ads blend in seamlessly with the content, making them look less like ads and more like an extension of the content itself.

Whether it's a video, graphics, or a product carousel, interscrollers can deliver a natural, unobtrusive look.

Interactive Ads

These ads are interactive in two ways. First, by eliminating the need for the user to search for the close button as is the case with interstitial ads, they create a larger window of opportunity for the user to engage with the ad itself. Those extra split-seconds in which the user isn’t occupied with trying to close the ad is time that marketers can use to hook their attention.

Second, the ads themselves are usually designed to contain animation or a blend of audio-visual content that users find more engaging.

Automatically Responsive

The ad format is responsive to mobile, tablet, and desktop platforms, so advertisers don’t need to worry about placement or whether portions of the ad will be cropped out. This is an especially useful feature when running cross-platform campaigns where the same ad creative needs to be implemented across multiple platforms.

Better User Engagement With Ads

Interscroller advertisements can generate up to 200% more user engagement than conventional ads.This is because they snap out to cover the entire screen once the user has scrolled through 85% of the ad placement. This ensures better user engagement without annoying the user.

Better User Engagement With Content

Interscroller advertisements not only improve user engagement with ads, but also improve how users process the publisher content the ad is embedded in. A 2020 study found that a small amount of distraction while processing information actually improved the brain’s capacity to process it.

How to Implement Interscroller Ads

You can place interscroller ads through ad networks, just like interstitial ads. Alternatively, you can also deal directly with publishers for such ads because they are more familiar with their content and audience.

Interscroller ads can be published in various forms, such as GIF, PNG, JPG, and HTML5. They can also be run on multiple video formats, such as MOV, FLY, MPEG4, AVI, and MP4.

If you’re running your campaign on a network, you can activate the interscroller format by simply navigating to the setting of your campaign (new or existing) and uploading the ad in the form of a template. This is another area where interscroller ads score over forms of desktop and mobile ads, as their easy-to-use templates eliminate the need to be proficient in coding or HTML.

How to Build an Interscroller Ad Unit

Building an interscroller ad unit is quite straightforward. The steps mentioned below should work for most mobile ad networks with minor adjustments:

When you create a new ad, name it and select its type as interscroller. You can choose between including a pre-populated option or a custom option
Upon completing the form, the system will guide you to a builder that loads the interscroller canvas based on your custom sizes or recommended sizes. This step also allows you to choose the size, placement, and positioning
You can now create an interscroller ad unit and preview it
Upon receiving the ad request you created and confirmed, the network will provide you with fully functional ad material in the form of an ad tag

Best Practices for Interscroller Ad Units

If you're looking to provide a great ad experience with your interscroller format on mobile devices, here are some important aspects to consider:

The ideal design size for both low and high aspect ratio devices is 640 x 1280
Be mindful when using a programmatic ad platform for deploying your interscroller ad. This is because programmatic ads have specific size and aspect ratio requirements which could result in the cropping of your interscroller unless customized using HTML tags. There is also the risk of a premium interscroller ad being deployed on a website of poor quality resulting in lower conversion rates
It’s a good idea to place interscroller ads inside the feed for the best experience

Final Thoughts

Digital advertising is increasingly moving towards a non-disruptive content paradigm. This means that providing the end user with a seamless digital experience is the top most priority.

Publishers and advertisers who ignore this not only risk decreased user engagement, they may face Google’s ire.

The interscroller ad format fits into this changed publishing landscape as it behaves like a native ad, embedding unobtrusively within the content flow and engaging users subtly. This not only delivers better revenue for advertisers, but also enhances publisher credibility.

If you’re making more than $2,000 in monthly ad revenue, contact us today to learn more about how Publift can help increase your ad revenue and best optimize the ad space available on your website or app.