Why does my video interstitial has such a high CTR?

According to our internal data, in interstitial video campaigns it is possible to see CTR numbers up to 10% or more. This number can happen specifically in Ad Exchanges like Inmobi and/or Applovin. But in mediasmart we know that your question is: Is my campaign really performing well? Here we come with some answers.

Why does this happen?

This is due to the nature of this creative type and how those ad exchanges present it to the users. Although the clicks are real, it is likely that part of those clicks can be unintentional, meaning that is a High Impact Ad (fullscreen) and as soon as some users see the ad, they might try to close it quickly but rather get redirected to the landing page. Once they noticed they had clicked, they rapidly hit the back button or finish the session. Sometimes, the page does not even have the time to load.

What is the consequence for a campaign with a high level of unintentional clicks?

For Google Analytics metrics the landing page can get traffic considered as poor quality: sessions with a very low time spent on the page, no user interaction on the page (not even scroll), high bounce rate, etc.

What can be done to avoid this situation?

We know this high CTR can make you wonder about the reliability of the clicks and it is true that the CTR for this specific type of creative in certain ad exchanges might not be a good option to evaluate the users real interest in the ad. The good news is that, if you want to avoid this situation, you have tools available in mediasmart to help you with it: if the success of your campaign is measured based on the activity of the users on the landing page, our best recommendation is that you implement our conversion pixels to track not only visits/sessions but also user actions that generate value to the brand (filling in a form, request more information, visit other pages, etc).

By using the conversion pixels, mediasmart platform will know from which impressions or clicks we are receiving more visits/sessions from users that are genuinely interested in the ad. After a decent amount of conversions, the campaign can be tested to target CPA. This way, our optimization algorithm will automatically start to buy more from ad placements that guarantee a traffic of quality, and will decrease the budget spent on placements (publishers, SSPs, etc.) that have a high number of unintentional clicks.