Google learns just how bad those 'Get the App' web ads are

Dirk Libbey

Posts: 41   +0

You're surfing the web on your phone or tablet and you just want to read a news story when a window pops up and asks if you to download the app instead. What do you do? After feeling annoyed, of course. Well, Google actually studied exactly what people do when faced with those 'get the app' pages and what they learned... was exactly what you thought they'd learn.

Google had one of those promotional interstitials pop up whenever anybody visited Google+ via web browser. While 9% did in fact press the 'get the app' button, they found that 69% simply navigated away from the page entirely when faced with the annoying advertisement. When the interstitial page was removed and replaced with a smart app banner, site traffic increased by 17% with no noticeable impact on app downloads.

Google has now published their results in hopes that other companies will follow suit and remove these pages, as they now believe the mobile web is better without them. Thank you, Google.

While we're tempted to submit this study to the "Journal of Incredibly Obvious Things" it's nice to see that somebody actually reviewed their ad campaign and decided whether or not it was worth it. Ad clicks are what Google is all about after all, and if one form of advertising is actually keeping people away from their pages, it means the eyeballs won't be around to view all the other advertising. We hope other companies take note and follow suit.

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Most annoying ads are like: your (phone model) is in danger...blah blah install this app..when you just want to read the news and you have to go back reload the page like 3-4 times and sometimes exit browser completely. And they wonder why they lose traffic ... ofc best solution is to never visit those websites again on mobile phone.
 
I hate those "Install the App" pages. I have no trust that the App is going to use less resources (read: bandwidth) and you can't return to particular pages via the history.
 
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