Strategy for interstitials

Hello,

I need an opinion on strategy for interstitials. I’ve started using it in one of my games recently - besides banners.

My questions:

  1. When to show them? On app start? On app exit? Between levels?
  2. How often to show it.

What do you think?

Currently i’m showing one interstitial per session - on returning to main menu - so probably user is leaving application. But i’m not sure if it’s right time - maybe he is busy (can’t play anymore) and also don’t have time to click on ad?

On the other side, showing interstial on app start may also not be right moment, because player wants to play my game instead of clicking ads.

I know i should probably use one solution for about a month and then try second, but maybe you have experience with such situations?

Try to show interstitials between the game levels, like they clear level 1 or fail level etc. Its all about the sequence.

Also, many people are too scared to try various strategies, like showing at start/exit etc. Split test your ads to perfection. A little bit of change can make a huge difference.

One suggestion I make is: if you show more than one interstitial per session, try to not use the same Interstitial provider (especially if they pay per exhibition).

For example AdMob: dont show them more than once per session. Show them only once per session, then put other interstitial providers on the other slots (in case you do exhibit multiple interstitials).

EDIT: Forgot to add the reason. It’s because they pay less the subsequent exhibits for the same user, so it’s not worth it. Just put another provider and you’ll get more revenue (and for the advertisers will be better, users dont like to see the same ads all the time).

Few nice tips you can find in our “Placements” movie here: Placements best practices - YouTube

I suggest to try as many placements as possible and see how each performs (in appnext, we let you set up each placement with different id so in the report you can compare performance clearly) and let the users see the interstitial as many times as possible that you don’t feel that hurt the user experience.
The highest earning placement (revenue per DAU, not ecpm) is between levels.

In general, every break in the action of a user, is great place to try.

Hope that helps.