Interstitial and rewarded ads

Fullscreen ads are RTB ad units that can display Text & Image ads, display banners, or video ads. The ad covers the entire screen and appears between a user request and content delivery, such as when a player moves to the next level in a game.

Interstitial ads

Interstitial ads are fullscreen ads commonly served in mobile apps. Key features include:

• The ads are served during screen transitions, unlike fullscreen ads, which can appear anywhere.
• Popular sizes: 320×480, 480×320, 768×1024, 1024×768.
• The ads can appear as an image, HTML5 content, or video. Users can usually dismiss the ad right away or after 3–5 seconds.
• To speed up ad delivery, the SSP can precache creatives in the background inside the app.

How it's passed in the request

It's passed in the Bid Request as a parameter with the imp.instl = 1 value.

For video ads, an additional parameter inside the video object can be passed: imp.video.placement = 5 (interstitial placement).

How to close Interstitial ads

Users must always be able to close interstitial ads:

• For banners (HTML5/MRAID): The publisher almost always requires MRAID support (api: [3, 5, 6]). MRAID includes a dedicated mraid.close() method. The creative renders a close button and calls this method, or the publisher's SDK renders its own close button over the banner.
• Close delay: The App Store and Google Play policies require the close button to appear almost immediately for static banners and within 3–5 seconds for video ads.

Prohibited practices for interstitial ads

1. Unexpected ads: Interstitial ads must not appear while the user is actively interacting with the app, like steering a car in a game or scrolling a page.
2. No exit: Creatives that imitate system errors or feature fake, non-clickable close buttons designed to force accidental taps (fat-finger clicks) aren't allowed.
3. Auto-redirects: Creatives must not automatically open an app store or external site without a physical tap on the screen.

What an interstitial ad looks like

Rewarded ads

Rewarded ads render in full screen and give users a reward for completing a view, such as unlocking a file or exclusive site content. The screen shows a timer that counts down the seconds until the reward is granted. If the user closes the ad early, they won't receive the reward. Rewarded ads have the highest completion rate (~95%+).

How it's passed in the request

Under the OpenRTB 2.6 specification, the rewarded signal is passed in the imp.rwdd = 1 field (default value is 0).

The ad can transition into an HTML5 end card once the video completes. To support this, the publisher needs to pass MRAID support (api: [3, 5, 6]) in the bid request along with the video format.

What a rewarded ad looks like