What is Rewarded UA & Who Is It for?

Rewarded user acquisition provides a sustainable method to connect advertisers with new users. It spread rapidly across the mobile gaming industry and is beginning to see wider adoption across other industries. But what exactly is rewarded UA, and is it the right way to spend your ad budget? 

Understanding 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. 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. 

This approach reframes the user as a partner, and compensates them for their time while they discover new apps and games. They can use our platform as an alternative App Store, but unlike the actual App Store, they get paid.

The benefits for users are obvious, but for advertisers, the idea of paying users can seem counter-intuitive.

What Rewarded User Acquisition Can Do For You

With reward-based user acquisition, we can deliver higher life-term value through increased spending. We do this 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 but shallow campaigns.  

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.