Rewarded video is an incredibly popular and high performing ad format that never gets old. When implemented thoughtfully, rewarded video ads stand as the biggest revenue generator for many game developers, while also adding value to the core mobile game experience.
At InMobi, upon completion of nine years of solid experience helping gaming developers from all over the globe getting started with in-app monetization and ongoing personalized 24/7 optimization, we would like to share six practical pro-tips to conquer rewarded video success.
1. Choose the perfect reward to incentivize daily gameplay
When settling on what to use as a reward, the first thing to explore is learning what players would consider enticing to keep them coming back for more every single day. Two great strategies are:
1) Offer a juicy reward for a limited time to create a sense of urgency and
2) Frequency cap the best reward to one a day
Premium currencies and extra lives are a fantastic choice as well as ‘hard to obtain’ in-game items. The opportunity of unlocking such rewards builds a powerful habit of daily check-in, much improving user retention. This, in combination with in-app purchases (IAP), will eventually turn some of these very loyal players into LTV users who spend money in your store. We’ll cover IAP in depth in the next section.
Another incredibly smart tactic is to use rewarded video to amplify the prizes collected after a completed game. For instance, in Subway Surfers, players are offered the chance to consistently double up every item obtained from the mystery boxes found during game play.
Subway Surfers “Double Up!” Button prompts a rewarded video
2. Combine tastefully rewarded video with in-app purchases (IAP)
A lot of people worry that rewarded video will cannibalize IAPs because, when given the option, players will always prefer not to spend their own money. Backed by performance data from across our platform of over 32K apps that reach over 1.56 billion users, we can confidently say that rewarded ads do not come at the expense of IAP and, in fact, it can even be the reverse. We believe that adding rewarded video to your game actually boosts overall in-app purchases since this offers gamers a low cost way to see the value of extras such as power-ups, coins and so on. However, do not forget that your rewarded ad strategy should enhance game monetization: make sure your offers are limited so that there is still motivation to make an in-app purchase. This means, you must strategically frequency-cap rewarded video to a reduced amount per user per hour/day.
We’ll elaborate on this aspect in pro-tip #4.
3. Choose the right video ad length for your game
When it comes to mobile gaming, every second away from the game matters, even if you know that there is a juicy reward with your name on it at the end of the clip. Often, you can consider shortening allowed video length to a maximum of 15-20 seconds if most of your gamers experience a short playing time (less than 2-3 minutes). Longer video ads could be upsetting for the gamer, potentially harming retention in the long haul. On the other hand, a 30 second brand video ad represents the perfect break to help unwind after a long game play of over 5 minutes of non-stop screen tapping to cool down from the adrenaline rush and get ready for the next level.
Stay tuned for the second part of this blog series, coming very soon!
Learn to #WinWithVideo. Join the winning team now!
Are you a gaming developer looking into implement rewarded video in your game? Easy integration, superb monetization and expert account management is awaits!
Check our brand new dedicated website for all things video - winwithvideo.com and get in touch with the expert InMobi Gaming team to learn how to get started in no time!
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