This study examined the influence of interstitial advertising of online stores on the purchase decision of postgraduate students of University of Uyo. The study adopted the survey research design and the questionnaire served as data collection instrument. The major objective of the study was to find out whether the interstitials of Jumia and Konga online stores influenced the students’ purchase decision. Using the multi-stage, cluster and systematic sampling procedures, a sample size of 160 respondents were arrived at. Results show that 58% of the students had bad perception towards interstitials while 93% percent reacted negatively to the interstitial advertising of the online stores. Negative reactions to the interstitials were as a result of their perceived annoying (36%); distractive (17%); time wasting (7%) and intrusive (26%) nature. Major result show that the interstitial advertising of the online stores did not influence the students’ purchase decision. It was recommended that online marketers handling the advertising campaign of Jumia and Konga should reduce the level of intrusiveness of interstitials on the Internetsurfing adventure of potential customers.

Keywords: Interstitials, Online advertising, Purchase decision