What is Rewarded UA & Who Is It for?

Rewarded user acquisition first emerged in the mobile gaming industry, and involves paying users for their engagement, namely by asking them to complete tasks and make in-app purchases. While this approach seems counter-intuitive, the upfront costs for advertisers are outweighed by the greater benefit of finding and retaining highly engaged users, who are likely to continue spending even once they are no longer being rewarded.  

It was quickly recognized as a sustainable way to bring in new users and make them comfortable with in-app spending, and has spread rapidly since 2020. But how exactly does rewarded UA work in practice, and is it the right way to spend your ad budget?

What is Rewarded User Acquisition?

The concept is simple: Let users pick games and apps that interest them, and then increasingly reward them as they complete in-app tasks and make purchases. In a mobile game, for instance, a user could defeat a low-level enemy for a small reward, maybe only a few cents, but if they reach a higher level and defeat a harder enemy, they will earn significantly more.

Users treat our platform as an alternative App Store, but unlike the actual App Store, they get paid. This reframes them as partners within the relationship — who are compensated for their time — rather than mere consumers, and leaves them with a positive overall impression of the games being advertised.

The benefits for users then are obvious. Hence, of the over 2000 gamers we surveyed in a recent white paper, the vast majority of those who had experience with rewarded UA platforms claimed that rewards were now a key factor when choosing new games. But for advertisers, the idea of paying for engagement can seem confusing.

What Rewarded User Acquisition Can Do for You

Despite the additional costs associated with this approach, we deliver higher revenue for advertisers by increasing the lifetime value of each user. 

We do this in two ways. Firstly, by attracting the highest-spending users, incentivizing them with smart reward funnels, and retaining them over months and years. Which contrasts starkly with older approaches to mobile UA that focused on low-intent users with wide-reaching but shallow campaigns. And secondly, we convert engaged but low-spending users to high-spending users.

Because users engaged by rewarded UA stay longer and spend more, advertisers can reliably achieve higher ROAS even if their initial cost per user is more expensive. And the results consistently bear this out.

In a recent campaign we executed on behalf of a top ten adventure game, we found that although CPI was about 12% higher when compared to Google, the ROAS was more than twice as high after 180 days, and the ARPU almost three times as high. 

Of course, being a new model, RUA isn’t entirely without its challenges. It has to be integrated into your existing marketing pipeline, and it requires more sophisticated data analysis to find the right reward structure for each game.

But the benefits hugely outweigh this concern, and we see the effectiveness of RUA being proven time and time again. Which is why we expect rewarded UA, which is seeing a surge in adoption across the mobile gaming industry, will spread not just to PC and console but far beyond, especially when coupled with better data analysis.

If you still have any questions about rewarded UA and how it can help you grow, please book a free consultation with us today.