On the World Wide Web

World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...

, interstitials are web pages

Web page

A web page or webpage is a document or information resource that is suitable for the World Wide Web and can be accessed through a web browser and displayed on a monitor or mobile device. This information is usually in HTML or XHTML format, and may provide navigation to other web pages via hypertext...

 displayed before or after an expected content page, often to display advertisements

Online advertising

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, blogs, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, interstitial...

 or confirm the user's age. Most interstitial advertisements are delivered by an Ad server.

Some people take issue with the use of such pages to present online advertising

Online advertising

Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, blogs, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, interstitial...

 before allowing users to see the content they were trying to access. Less controversial uses of interstitial pages include introducing another page or site before directing the user to proceed; or alerting the user that the next page requires a login, or has some other requirement which the user should know about before proceeding.

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.

See also

• Pop-up ad
  Pop-up ad
  Pop-up ads or pop-ups are a form of online advertising on the World Wide Web intended to attract web traffic or capture email addresses. Pop-ups are generally new web browser windows to display advertisements...
  
  
• Adobe Flash
  Adobe Flash
  Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
  
  , a technology similarly in its application for online advertising
  Online advertising
  Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, blogs, Rich Media Ads, Social network advertising, interstitial...
  
  .
• AdBlock
  Adblock
  Adblock Plus is a content-filtering extension for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers. ABP, a forked version of Adblock, allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed.-How it works:Like Mozilla's built-in image blocker, Adblock...
  
  , a tool to prevent the display of online advertisements.
• Ad server, the technology that delivers most online advertisements.