Interstitial webpage


On the web, interstitials are web pages displayed before or after an expected content page, often to display advertisements or confirm the user's age. Most interstitial advertisements are delivered by an ad server. They should not be confused with cookie consent pages directives set by the Data Protection Directive from the EU.
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.

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 web pages. According to a standard advanced by the IAB, an interstitial can either be displayed on a separate webpage, or appear briefly as an overlay on the target page. Moreover, mobile advertising guidelines created by the Mobile Marketing Association include in-app interstitial ads, that are integrated into applications, rather than web pages.

Circumvention

Many interstitial pages are circumvented by NoScript and AdBlock.