Bitly adds interstitial ads to shortened URLs, unlocking new revenue stream

Bitly has changed its policy and will now insert interstitial ads on millions of shortened links associated with Free accounts.

Bitly, the well-known URL-shortening service, notified its customers about a change in its Free plan that will start adding interstitials with ads for shortened links and QR codes. The app also notified free users that they must upgrade to a paid plan to remove them.

As part of the policy change, Bitly updated its Terms of Service (ToS) and labeled the interstitials with ads as “Destination Previews.”

At the end of the Destination Previews paragraph, they stated, If you wish to have an advertising-free experience for your end users, you may purchase a fee-based Bitly Service that excludes advertising.

Bitly’s interstitial ad is a landing page that displays a large ad, a link card for the destination, and this statement from Bitly: “Bitly is dedicated to making the internet a safer place for everyone. Use the site preview above to make sure the link takes you where you expect.”

Even though the page’s purpose is to monetize shortened links, Bitly is spinning the interstitial ad as a safety feature. And consequently, if this is the experience that people begin to associate with Bitly links, it may do harm to its brand, and steer people away from using its URL shortening service.

The desktop version of Bitly’s interstitial ad page has more white space, which will likely result in fewer ad clicks. In contrast, the mobile version puts the large ad front and center, which will likely be even more confusing for people clicking a Bitly link and expecting to land on the destination page. It also further erodes the message that the interstitial ad page is a safety feature.

Why is Bitly showing ads?

Bitly was sold to Spectrum Equity in 2017. On the surface, this move looks like an attempt to reduce costs for the private equity firm and use Destination Previews to force free users into paying customers. However, considering the company’s Free plan is severely limited and only allows 5 links per month, this move may have more to do with inactive users than active ones.

Since Bitly has existed since 2008 and millions of Bitly links are all over the web, moving to an interstitial advertising model would instantly create a new revenue stream for the company. I think that is the most likely reason for the change.

How the change affects SEO

Bitly links use 301 redirects to the destination page. That’s important because Google passes link value to destination pages with redirects. The problem with adding interstitials is that it breaks the redirect to the destination page and blocks the passing of any link value. Bitly could still pass the link value if they choose to not serve interstitials to search bots, but that may go against Google’s spam policies and page experience guidelines.

I tested one of the URLs that serves an interstitial ad in Google’s Rich Result Testing tool, which uses the user agent Google-InspectionTool, and Bitly served the destination page, not the interstitial ad. Coywolf contacted Bitly to confirm if its policy is not to serve interstitials to search bots and will update the article if they respond.

Meanwhile, some SEOs, like Simon Cox, caution against using URL shorteners altogether. He says, “I really don’t believe that URL shorteners help with SEO at all.” He recommends that if you must shorten a URL, consider using your site’s domain with a short folder name off the root and then redirecting it to the longer URL. For example, creating example.com/topic which redirects to example.com/category/long-article-title/.

Free alternatives to Bitly

Those who don’t want to pay for a Bitly account, don’t need the level of sophistication of their features and services, and want to create unlimited shortened links using a custom domain should consider using a self-hosted open-source URL shortener like YOURLS.

I’ve used YOURLS reliably on a cheap shared hosting account with multiple custom domains for many years. If you want to try it out, check out this step-by-step guide I wrote on installing YOURLS.