Interstitials are going away – The next generation Radioplayer console will no longer support interstitials. If you are using this ad format, we recommend you migrate to alternatives such as in-console display advertising or VAST video advertising
What are interstitials?
We’ve built a new commercial feature into the browser player, called an Interstitial. This ad unit is designed to be shown to users in the console window before they actually reach the Radioplayer player for that station. It’s designed as a ‘takeover’ and allows you to insert a page of any HTML in the console before a user sees it. The concept doesn’t have to be used purely for commercial purposes but if you are, then you can easily set it up to point to an adserver)
To ensure users don’t see it too often, interstitials are only shown when someone opens the Radioplayer browser player from your website. If they find you in search or recommendations etc, the interstitial won’t be shown. So the experience is:
[User clicks Listen from your homepage] -> [Popup opens] -> [Interstitial shown, if enabled] -> [User taken to player]
How to set up an interstitial
Prepare your creative
The first step is to work out the ‘creative’. You can design a creative to fit the full size of the console window – this lends itself to interactive ads, video pre-rolls, even splash pages to promote a big event or competition. Build the creative as you would any other page of markup and host it – and its related assets – somewhere on your web server (note, if you’re using an adserver, you’ll need to follow its instructions for creating campaigns and uploading creatives). Make a note of the URL of your creative as you’ll need it in the next section.
Add the Skip button
Radioplayer requires all interstitials to show a Skip button. This is compulsory if you’re using this feature. You can find the approved skip button by going into your console code and locating the preroll-framework/index.html file. It’s fine to just left that control and place it in the top right of the page you’ve built.
Schedule the interstitial
Most stations will configure their interstitial using the Station Control Panel but advanced users may wish to reconfigure the console manually and the integration guide provides help for those users. If you’re using the Station Control Panel, here are the steps:
- Login to the Station Control Panel
- Locate the Interstitial Manager
- You now need to click the link to Create a New Interstitial
- Give the interstitial a name – this could be a campaign name or simple descriptor. It’s not shown to users and is just for your benefit.
- Provide the URL where the creative can be found. Please check this URL in a new browser window first. If you point it to a 404 page, your console will break.
- If you’d like the interstitial to appear automatically for a set period of time, use the start and end date fields to set these. The timezone is set to UK time and will adjust for BST.
If you leave the start date blank, the console will show the interstitial immediately
If you leave the end date blank, the console wlll show the interstitial indefinitely. - If you’re ready for the interstitial to be published, tick the Enabled which now means that the interstitial will be shown to users within the dates you’ve specified