The ad close is interrupting the moment when a learner decides whether to continue.
Ad delivery protects free access while the next-lesson transition must protect daily practice momentum.
Who you’d be doing this for
“I closed the ad, looked up at my stop, and never found the next exercise again.”
Paula Castillo · Commuter learning Spanish
A free learner who uses a few minutes between transit stops for daily practice.
What is at stake
Next-lesson starts fall from 68% to 57% after free learners close an ad. You must weigh ad delivery against a transition that keeps a short practice session moving.
Why it isn’t already fixed
Every obvious fix costs something else. That’s the part you’d have to decide.
- ad delivery vs. lesson momentum
- fast release vs. interaction polish
- existing events vs. richer states
Why Duolingo
Free learners encounter ads inside the same short lesson rhythm that streaks and daily practice depend on.
Written with these in mind
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This is the setup. The work is inside.
Running it puts you in the room: the full situation and its constraints, stakeholders who push back in their own words, and the decisions that are yours to make. What you produce becomes a Day One Plan — work you can show someone instead of describing.