Rewarded Advertising: The UA Channel Delivering 2-3x Higher ROAS

Rewarded advertising is taking over the post-IDFA mobile marketing space, and it’s only just getting started. Consumers know that traditional advertising doesn’t offer them any value, so we took a look at the numbers to see just how much rewarded advertising increases ROAS compared to what came before.

What is Rewarded Advertising?

Rewarded advertising provides real-life rewards in exchange for a user’s engagement. In order to redress the imbalance between the app publisher and user, we act as a middleman between the publisher and traditional advertising channels through our platforms like Freecash. 

Rewarded advertising is a fantastic user acquisition channel, but is also by its very nature a retention and loyalty platform thanks to our consistent, event-based rewards. By personalising incentives using our data-driven approach, we are able to deliver higher value users than traditional channels. In fact, in our study of over 2,000 gamers, high value players ranked reward-based platforms their number 1 preferred way to find new games.

The future of advertising and UA is changing - at Almedia we have essentially created an alternative app store at Freecash.com, and it’s one where users actually want to be.

Comparing Rewarded Advertising to Traditional Platforms

To start with, our study of over 500 mobile developers showed that the majority of developers have already used rewarded advertising because it increases retention, with 59% expecting rewarded advertising to become an even bigger part of their upcoming strategy for mobile game UA.

Let's take a look at some real data comparing 1000 incentive users from Almedia against the same number from Google.  

Add to this the connectivity, community-building, and communication offered by Freecash and the Almedia service through notifications, emails, and data-driven rewards, and it’s easy to see why 82% of rewarded advertising campaigns have outperformed non-rewarded alternatives.

How to Integrate and Implement Rewarded Advertising

As part of our study of 500+ developers, we found that 95% of devs who had tried rewarded UA were confident it gave them a competitive edge. At this point, rewarded is already a vital channel many are already taking advantage of, so how can you take your first steps?

Essentials for Your Rewarded Advertising Push

1. Define your goals. What do you want to achieve? Are you prioritising increasing your user base, or leveling-up your monetisation?

2. Share comprehensive event data. The more data your reward partner has, the better we can build highly-specific funnels and drive progress to your campaign goals.

3. Be experimental. We strongly encourage A/B testing with reward thresholds and sizes, campaign lengths, KPIs, and even experimenting with completely different approaches. For example, one campaign we ran added a sweepstake as a reward funnel with bonus prizes including a PS5.

Through a strategic focus on collaboration with your rewards partner, we’ll be able to set you apart from the ever-increasing number of studios taking advantage of rewarded UA. Book a free consultation here.

Rewarded Advertising - The Future

There remains still a lot of potential and room for growth in rewarded advertising. In our study, we found that fraud was the biggest barrier to rewarded advertising adoption. We invest heavily in a sophisticated fraud prevention team and system, consistently improving the legitimacy of the rewarded advertising sector in the eyes of mainstream advertisers.

Our data-driven approach is constantly evolving too. We are at the forefront of individual and segment-based personalisation based on user interest both in rewards and rewarded events, and regularly iterate on our product to ensure you maximise LTVs.

With all this context, it’s clear we’re experiencing a boom in rewarded advertising, and the true power of this method lies in the sentiment with actual players. By making advertising enticing for the consumer, with 75% feeling positive about reward-based UA, both the app and its users can benefit. We expect rewarded advertising to further infiltrate the mainstream, no longer limited to the mobile sector and being used across a much wider variety of industries.

We expect rewarded advertising to further infiltrate the mainstream, no longer limited to the mobile sector and being used across a much wider variety of industries. In today's post-IDFA landscape, the numbers tell the compelling story: 82% of rewarded campaigns outperform traditional advertising, while 71% of users report playing longer and more frequently when rewards are offered.

At Almedia, our alternative App Store approach transforms the advertising dynamic, creating partnerships rather than one-way transactions and much more than just CPI campaigns. By connecting high-value users with personalized rewards, we've consistently delivered 2-3x higher ROAS compared to traditional channels.

The future belongs to those who recognize that users deserve value in exchange for their engagement.

Ready to boost your ROAS? Book a free consultation today.