Rewarded video ads

Rewarded ads are a popular type of mobile in-app ad used by publishers and advertisers that are very commonly used in gaming apps for promoting other gaming apps. Also referred to as rewarded video ads, these mobile ads work by offering a reward to users in the game they’re currently playing in exchange for watching a complete video ad for another app. These rewards can be anything from an in-app reward such as extra player lives, in-app game currency or points, and so on. Aside from game apps, rewards can be used for any app and can include extended free trials or in-app gifts.

Rewarded video ads give users an incentive to watch the whole ad since, clearly, there’s a reward. Advertisers love these ads as they offer a number of benefits such as:

• Increasing user engagement, loyalty, and retention
• Higher video viewability and click-through rates (CTRs)
• Higher opt-ins due to the higher CTRs

A final reason that advertisers love rewarded ads so much is that they only pay when a user watches the entire ad, so each user often has a higher chance of taking the desired action, resulting in higher conversion rates throughout the entire funnel. As Udonis highlights, the process of monetizing a rewarded ad works as follows:

• Offer: The user is offered a reward in exchange for watching a video ad to completion
• Video watch time: The user chooses to watch the video and must complete it entirely to receive the reward
• Reward: After the user completes the video, they receive a reward inside the app

As Google highlights, rewarded video ads are fast becoming one of the most popular ad types as they provide a balance of monetization and user experience: 

With increasing competition in the mobile gaming market, developers need to be more focused on engagement and retention. As such, finding the right balance between monetization and user experience is critical to the success of the game. Rewarded ads are becoming one of the most popular ways to achieve that balance: over the last year, the number of apps using AdMob rewarded ads has quadrupled.

Regardless of the reward offered or the type of app being advertised, it’s essential for advertisers to track, analyze, and optimize the performance of the campaigns with the use of marketing analytics.

As a leader in marketing anlaytics and cost aggregation, Singular helps mobile marketers take a scientific approach to their growth by identifying timely and accurate performance insights. In the context of rewarded ads, Singular provides unrivaled trackability and ROI insights that expose both high level and granular analytics to optimize both yield and spend.