Most ads get ignored in crowded feeds before they get a chance to say anything, and that’s exactly the problem interactive ads are built to solve. Traditional display and video formats still have a role, but they usually ask for a simple, one-way response: watch, click, and move on.
Interactive ads change that exchange by giving people something to do inside the creative itself. They can tap, swipe, explore, play, compare, choose, scan, or shop. When the viewer participates, the ad becomes easier to remember and more valuable to the brand.
Key takeaways
- Interactive ads are digital formats that respond to user actions like tapping, swiping, or answering a question, instead of delivering a fixed one-way message.
- Interactive ads drive higher engagement, longer interaction times, stronger brand recall, and better conversion potential than static formats.
- Common formats include interactive video ads, interactive display ads, playable ads, shoppable ads, and gamified experiences.
- Interactive ads are harder to produce and localize at scale, which is where a creative platform built for consistency across variations makes the difference.
- Celtra’s Creative Enablement lets teams build and scale interactive rich media and video ads while keeping every version on-brand.
What are interactive ads?
Interactive ads are digital ad formats that respond to what the viewer does. Where a standard banner or pre-roll video delivers a fixed message in one direction, an interactive ad reacts to input and gives the viewer something to do inside the ad creative itself.
That input can take many forms, including clicking, swiping, exploring products, answering a question, scanning a QR code, or interacting with animated elements built into the unit. The experience adapts as the user engages, which makes the ad feel closer to a mini product demo than a passive impression. Platforms like Celtra’s Creative Enablement are built to produce these interactive formats and serve them across channels
Check out an interactive video ad in action, built with our client Mobkoi for Club Med below.
Why interactive ads work
Interactive advertising has grown popular with marketers because participation changes how people process a message. When someone interacts with an ad instead of just watching it, they spend more time with the brand and remember more of what they saw. A few benefits show up consistently across campaigns:
- Higher engagement rates compared with static formats
- Longer interaction times as users explore the creative
- Stronger customer experiences that feel useful rather than intrusive
- Higher conversion potential when the interaction leads naturally to a purchase or sign-up
Interaction also builds a more memorable connection between a brand and its audience, since people recall experiences they took part in more clearly than ones they only saw.
MPlus used Celtra’s Catalogue Browser to turn standard ad units into interactive, multi-panel shoppable galleries. By giving audiences a way to swipe and explore products directly inside the creative, they achieved a 13.8% engagement rate—surpassing benchmarks by 6x—with users staying engaged for an average of 13 seconds. Read the full case study to see how interactive formats turn passive views into active attention.
Types of interactive ads
Interactive advertising covers a range of experiences, and most campaigns combine a few of them depending on the channel and the goal.
Interactive video ads
Interactive video ads let viewers shape the video as it plays. Ad experience may include video hotspots, choose-your-own adventure stories , or product detail pages. Brands use interactive video ads to turn watch time into action, which works well for product launches and storytelling campaigns on outstream and instream video inventory.
Interactive display ads
Interactive display ads add movement and input to standard banner placements. A viewer might swipe through a carousel, spin a product in 360 degrees, or expand the unit to reveal more content. Interactive display ads help performance and branding teams make everyday placements work harder without paying for premium inventory.
Playable and gamified ads
Gamified ads are interactive ad experiences that incorporate game mechanics, such as challenges, rewards, scoring, or puzzles, to encourage users to actively engage with an ad. They are most commonly produced for in-app inventory, but they can also be used on the web. They are very popular across CPG, entertainment, and sports because they can combine entertainment with a direct purchase or promotional incentive but they are also very common across sports, lottery and automotive verticals.
Shoppable ads
Shoppable ads bring the storefront into the creative. Viewers can browse products, check details, and add items to a cart or reach a checkout page directly from the ad, which shortens the path between discovery and purchase.
Example of interactive shoppable ad:
Challenges of interactive advertising
Interactive ads deliver strong results, though they ask more of the teams that build them. Production is more complex, and this is where interactive advertising often breaks down.
Without the right system capabilities, the creative that was meant to boost engagement becomes another production bottleneck.
How Celtra helps brands scale interactive advertising
Celtra helps teams manage that complexity. As a creative automation platform, Celtra helps marketing, media, and creative teams create, manage, and scale interactive advertising experiences across channels and formats. They use Creative Enablement to build interactive video and display formats, adapt them for different markets, keep every version on-brand, and reduce the manual work that usually slows down localization and production.
Brands use Celtra’s Creative Enablement to build interactive rich media and video ads that hold attention. When Celtra, The Trade Desk, and Backbone teamed up with Smartwool, the results proved it: shoppable, interactive creative on the open web delivered a 0.3% CTR, 7.5x higher than benchmark, alongside nearly 19 seconds of average exposure time. Real proof that better creative doesn’t just look good, it also performs.
Frequently Asked Questions
Interactive ads are digital ad formats built around participation. Instead of asking the viewer to watch or click and move on, they invite tapping, swiping, exploring, or answering questions directly inside the creative.
Compared to static formats, interactive ads tend to hold attention longer, get remembered more clearly, and convert better, since the viewer is doing something rather than just watching.
The main formats are interactive video ads, interactive display ads, playable ads, shoppable ads, and gamified experiences, each covered in more detail earlier in this article.
They often do, particularly with formats like playable and gamified ads, which combine entertainment with a direct purchase or promotional incentive.
Celtra gives teams building-block components that make producing interactive experiences fast and efficient, so formats can be built once and automatically scaled across sizes, languages, and channels while staying on-brand. For teams that want a faster starting point, Celtra also offers premium, pre-built interactive ad products that clients can use as-is or customize further.
