This article features the expert insights of Alexander Ruban, Head of Growth Strategy, who was invited by Dataconomy to analyse the evolving role of rewarded advertising in mobile gaming. With over a decade of experience in the mobile gaming industry, Alexander has managed a $14 million monthly user acquisition budget, built global user acquisition pipelines, and developed growth strategies for several top-grossing games. His experience spans marketing, mobile development, project management, and product development, giving him a unique, comprehensive understanding of how rewarded ecosystems impact acquisition, retention, and long-term monetisation today.
The last couple of years have seen tough times in the mobile ad industry, but what’s been particularly interesting is that amid its rise back up, something unexpected has occurred. Despite initial budget freezes in early 2023, worldwide spending on app installs has started to rise, with growth of around 18% per annum in mid-2024, but with one major twist.The price of attaining users in leading gaming markets has suddenly increased to several dollars per individual, and traditional user acquisition strategies have suddenly started costing too much to scale.
So, publishers ended up doing what they always end up doing: finding what still works. And reward-based user acquisition, which was so far relegated to the footnotes, began moving into the mainstream. Reward networks are beginning to show up right alongside industry behemoths in performance rankings, and Gamelight was declared No. 1 worldwide as a UA source by AppsFlyer, proving just how quickly this new method has come into its prime.
The increasing popularity of reward-based UA
Advertising reward platforms have become up-to-the-minute tools for managing demand that combine making money with getting users to interact with your content. Usually, advertisers pay on a cost-per-action (CPA) basis, which means that the user has to do something specific, like watch a video, install an app, or finish a tutorial, before they get paid. In exchange, the user gets an advantage or currency in the game right away. This open exchange of value can make RUA very useful. With RUA, you only have to pay for engaged users, unlike blind CPI purchases. Players say they like the model a lot, which isn’t surprising. Research done by TapJoy shows that 72% of mobile gamers willingly engage with rewarded in-app ads, while 64% prefer rewarded ads over sponsored social media posts. The value gamers get from in-game rewards creates a feeling of their money going further. According to a 2023 Mistplay survey, 84% of gamers expressed interest in trying a new game if it offered a genuine reward. One in four players even said they might leave their current game to play a reward game. These numbers show that users respond well to well-designed reward offers because they think they’re getting “something for nothing”, which usually leads to higher engagement and trust.
The offerwall advantage for engagement and retention
Recent data reveals that this channel is even better than before. Unity’s 2024 Mobile Growth & Monetisation Report (which looked at activity in 2023) found that engagement with rewarded videos grew 3.2% from one year to the following one. More than a third of daily active users watch rewarded videos in many different genres. For example, 38.4% of people who play word games and 37.6% of people who play RPGs do.
Placement is essential. When ads were shown at “pain points,” like when you ran out of lives, 38.1% of people signed up. When ads were shown between levels, only 23.8% of people signed up. Players are much more likely to respond when the ad resolves an issue rather than stopping the game.
Even more surprisingly, offerwall traffic is no longer the low-quality stereotype it used to be. Unity found that offerwall cohorts had 45.8% higher day-1 retention and 86.1% higher day-7 retention than standard video or interstitial cohorts. Reward tasks that are well-organised can attract players who are genuinely interested in the game, and they are often more committed than regular CPI traffic.
Platform results: Gamelight, Adjoe, and ROI signals
Specialist reward networks have started to show real, measurable movement, not just slide-deck optimism. Gamelight, the AI-driven UA platform, recently shared performance from a publisher running Cat Snack Bar campaigns. Installs didn’t just rise; they jumped, tripling over the test period. ARPU doubled. ROAS climbed 52%. And unusually for this category, long-term LTV held steady. Its recent top-tier ROI rankings from Singular and AppsFlyer suggest the company isn’t chasing scale for its own sake but leaning heavily into higher-quality cohorts.
Hamburg-based Adjoe, another heavyweight in the rewarded UA space, has taken an entirely unique route: expansion at speed. Fresh off its €100M raise, the company pushed into the U.S. in 2023, then into Singapore and Tokyo. Its Playtime format, with task-based rewards tucked inside non-gaming apps, has been picking up credit for strong IPM and surprisingly resilient engagement in markets where attention tends to evaporate fast.
Taken together, these platforms are becoming something like demand engines in their own right. They pull in big, motivated audiences who don’t just install an app and vanish; they actually stick around, which is increasingly rare in performance marketing right now.
Designing games for reward-driven players
For developers, the rise of reward-driven acquisition isn’t just a marketing shift – it reshapes how early gameplay should feel. New players need to instantly see the loop: do something, earn something. Some studios now open with a short “How to Earn Rewards” path or surface the rewards store before players even hit the first mission.
Unity’s numbers back the argument up. Simple actions, finishing a tutorial, and completing an early task – hit nearly 100% completion inside Offerwalls. Anything that requires effort or commitment (invites, purchases) drops off fast. For RUA traffic, the incentives that win are the ones that feel quick, achievable, and headache-free.
Timing is its own design lever. Reward prompts placed right after a level or when a player runs out of energy tend to feel natural instead of pushy. Unity even found that “resource-depleted” moments drive the highest opt-ins (38.1%). Players see a path forward and take it.
Analytics: Why RUA needs its own cohort model
Reward-acquired users don’t behave like organic players, and treating them as if they do is where teams usually go wrong. Some RUA players churn once the stream of bonuses dries up; others stick around and convert surprisingly well. That’s why more studios are treating RUA as its own acquisition lane in their LTV models instead of blending it into the usual mix.
Track RUA separately: Day 1/7 retention, ARPDAU, IAP size, payback windows – all of it. Cat Snack Bar is a solid example of why this matters: the traffic didn’t just scale, it generated returns, doubling ARPU over time. If you group RUA traffic with everything else, these patterns disappear, and budget decisions start getting distorted. Granular attribution isn’t optional anymore.
The CPA Model: Pros, risks, and the fraud factor
CPA has an obvious appeal: you’re paying for completed actions, not empty installs. But incentives also encourage opportunistic behaviour if you’re not watching carefully. Some networks have seen waves of “reward farmers” – players who blitz through tasks and delete the game the moment they cash out.
The answer isn’t to ditch RUA. It works with networks that actually monitor suspicious activity – odd conversion spikes, repeat device IDs, or session behaviour that just doesn’t look human. Most reputable offerwalls now bake in fraud-detection tools for exactly this reason.
Keeping player trust intact
Reward systems are always on the edge of falling apart. When they are carefully planned, players see them as truly generous features that make the game more fun and captivating. However, when players experience a rush or excessive workload during the first session, they begin to sense pressure. That’s when trust starts to break down.
People who work with rewards know that clarity is just as crucial as the reward itself. Players should know what a task entails, like how long does it take, if it asks for personal info, and what they get in return. They should get a short, honest explanation of why they need something private, like an email address, if the task calls for it. The relationship grows stronger, the smoother the redemption process and the clearer the communication. That openness is what turns players who are only interested in rewards into loyal, long-term users instead of just one-time opportunists.
When to use reward-based UA in 2024-2025
What was once a “nice extra” has quietly become an important part of modern UA strategy. Reward-based advertising isn’t just a strange alternative channel anymore; it’s where a lot of serious money is going. AppsFlyer highlighted that almost 60% of the top 20 media sources saw an increase in UA spending in early 2024. This means that marketers are spreading their money across more diverse, performance-driven channels, with RUA now firmly in the mix.
Studios that carefully add offerwalls to their funnels tend to have better retention and stronger ROAS curves than those that only use CPI campaigns. But none of this is simple to set up. Reward-driven acquisition only works when teams carefully plan onboarding and time rewards and look at user behaviour at the cohort level instead of just looking at surface-level metrics.
For teams that are just starting out, a realistic first step might be to add an offerwall from partners like Tapjoy or Adjoe, include a simple “earn rewards” moment in onboarding instead of hiding it later, and keep track of RUA traffic separately from day one so its LTV isn’t mixed in with standard cohorts. These basics help teams find signals early instead of making guesses.
Reward-based UA transforms into a stable and predictable growth engine when viewed as a value-added trade rather than a quick conversion hack. Neglecting this aspect can result in financial losses. The publishers who use rewards as part of a real, long-term relationship with their players are the ones who are most likely to win as acquisition costs go up and efficiency becomes the most important measure of success.
