Rewarded Video Ads is the phenomenon which propelled Crossy Roads to earn millions of dollars. Such an arduous feat certainly requires more than a simple creation of an ad slot. By fine tuning myriad levers such as choosing a monetization partner, placements, rewards etc, you too can achieve a home run. This webinar can help you in carefully identifying the set of placement and rewards for your app.
What you will learn from this webinar:
What are the right placements for your Rewarded Video ads?
How rewards can be an engagement lever to bring the users back to the game?
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InMobi
InMobi is the world’s most powerful mobile advertising platform enabling
brands, developers, and publishers to engage mobile consumers
globally.
Recognized by MIT Technology Review as one of the 50 Disruptive
Companies, InMobi reaches over 1 billion mobile uniques across 200
countries.
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Agenda
What is a Rewarded Video
Recommended - Placements
Best Practices - Rewards
Questions
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Agenda
What is a Rewarded Video
Recommended - Placements
Best Practices - Rewards
Questions
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What is a Rewarded Video?
● Is a short video ad format
● Around 15 seconds long
● Non-skippable video
● User opts-in to watch the video in
exchange for reward
o Virtual goods or in-app gifts
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Agenda
What is a Rewarded Video
Recommended - Placements
Best Practices - Rewards
Questions
1
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Why Does The Placement Matter?
An ad as an app
feature?
Win For All!
Rewarded
Video
Gamer
Developer
Advertiser
$ User Opt-in
$ Value Exchange
$ Engagement
$ Retention
$ Revenue Generation
$ Guaranteed Quality
Engagement
$ Positive Brand Association
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Recommended Placement
1 Start of Gameplay: Boosts
Skyline Skaters - Endless Runner Game
● Discoverability -
○ Games with multiple sessions enjoy
high CTR
● Opportunity -
○ Moderate eCPM and revenue
● Frequency -
○ Subsequent session with tight
frequency capping
● Boost -
○ Gives gamer a strong motive to
engage with the ad
10. Doodle Jump DC Super Heroes - Arcade
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Recommended Placement
2 End of Gameplay: Revive
● Discoverability -
○ Enjoys high CTR
● Opportunity -
○ High eCPM and revenue
● Frequency -
○ Ideal - One “Watch Video” per app session
● Revive -
○ Enables gamer to continue within the game
without losing the life and starting over
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Recommended Placement
3 Storefront: Virtual Currency
Payback 2 - The Battle Sandbox - Arcade
● Discoverability -
○ Each impression is highly valuable,
high CTRs
● Opportunity -
○ High eCPM, low revenue
● Frequency -
○ Tight frequency capping
○ The reward value shouldn’t exceed IAP
● Virtual Currency -
○ Gives non-payers an opportunity to
gain power-ups and progress.
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Recommended Placement
4 Upfront Menu: Easy Access
Skyline Skaters - Endless Runner Game
● Discoverability -
○ High exposure, high CTR
● Opportunity -
○ High eCPM, moderate revenue
● Frequency -
○ Tight frequency capping
● Easy Access -
○ Reward option exposed right at the
start of the game.
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Agenda
What is a Rewarded Video
Recommended - Placements
Best Practices - Rewards
Questions
1
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Best Practices: Rewards
1 Introduce an element of surprise
Beat the Bad Guy - Action
Player taps on “Spin” Spins the wheel for surprise
reward
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Best Practices: Rewards
2 Get creative with rewards
Tap Titans - Adventure
OR
Reward: Instant GratificationRewarded Video Nudge
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Best Practices: Rewards
3 Personalize the rewards
Two Dots - Puzzle**
**Example for illustration purpose
Relevant Reward
17. ● Keep the value of rewards lower than that of IAP to avoid cannibalizing the IAPs.
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Best Practices: Rewards
4 Help gamers think IAP
● Giving out rewards that are similar to those given out for IAPs can nudge users to make purchases
to get ahead in the game.
● Apply frequency capping on the number of videos shown to the user. This ensures that the user
can’t circumvent IAP to attain virtual currency valued more than IAP.
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Agenda
What is a Rewarded Video
Recommended - Placements
Best Practices - Rewards
Questions
1
2
3
4
20. The world’s most powerful
advertising platform
For more information visit us at
indecode.inmobi.net
Notes de l'éditeur
Explain the flow of the rewarded video
Before we deep dive into the recommended placements for Rewarded video ads, let’s understand why does the placement matter
In order to make the ads engaging and channelize the game loop, we would need the Ad to become an App Feature.
The prevalent ad formats like banner, and interstitial creates a forced experience with limited interactivity.
The power of sight, sound and motion of a video is far more interactive experience and coupled with user opt-in creates an ideal environment for user to engage better with the ads.
Rewarded Video is that medium which allows an ad to work for you by making users look for them in exchange of the value preferred by them.
This creates a win-win situation for all the key stakeholders, the developer, the gamer, and the advertiser
The gamer decides when to engage with the ad in exchange for the reward
For advertiser it is a quality engagement because the video is HD, instant-play, and the opt-in makes the engagement guaranteed. As the gamer is gaining value out of watching the video, it ends up creating a positive brand association for the advertiser in the gamer’s mind.
The rewarded mechanism boosts the engagement in the game, and these rewards also helps in retention and finally revenue generation.
Skyline Skaters is an endless runner game, and they give their gamers an option of boost right before the start of gameplay. This helps a gamer in starting the game from an advanced level, and thus creating a strong motive for the user to engage with an ad specially for those gamers who otherwise do not engage with the ad.
The first important point is to focus upon the visual design
The Call to action has to be visually integrated with the rest of the game as can be seen the example, the same style guide, font, color scheme etc.
The Call to action has to communicate clearly why the gamer should engage with it, and what he/ she would gain after watching it
Discoverability - If your app enjoys multiple gameplays within a single app session, this placement gives high CTRs as the likelihood of a user opting-in to watch the video over repeat sessions is very high.
Opportunity - Overall, the placement is moderate eCPM and gross revenue opportunity.
Frequency - The ‘watch video’ option should be exposed in subsequent game sessions, and should be limited to five per user, per day. Showcasing ads in the repeat sessions will also allow more time to pre-buffer the video ads, and will avoid the case of a no-show if the user requests for a video.
Try to create an environment of scarcity which will prompt users to engage with the ad more.
Doodle Jump DC Super Heroes is an arcade game, and the superhero version of the famous Doodle Jump. The doodler here has learnt a trick or two from batman and is now in Gotham city trying to save the stolen crystals against The Penguin, Mr. Freeze, The Joker, The Riddler and more.
Here the a gamer barring the pros, keeps on dying on frequent basis. In order to enable a gamer to keep going ahead in the game for every time he dies, “Watch a video” comes across as a strong retention mechanism.
Discoverability - This placement enjoys high CTRs, contributing to overall revenue as the likelihood of a user opting-in to watch the video in order to continue gameplay is very high.
Opportunity - Overall the placement is high eCPM, and total revenue opportunity.
Frequency - The ‘watch video’ option should ideally be shown only once during an app session. Otherwise the value of each video view will decrease as the user will opt-in only to increase the length of the gameplay.
Reinforcing that why this placement works: native integration and instead of ads floating all around, it is part of the game experience.
Payback 2 is an arcade game which includes everything from tank battles to high speed helicopter races to huge gang battles. The gamer visits the storefront during the gameplay to buy those quintessential power-ups, crystals, at this point in time the non-payers too can gain access to these in-game virtual currency to progress in the game.
Discoverability - This placement has limited exposure as only 1%-5% of users visit storefronts, but each impression is highly valuable in contributing towards high eCPMs.
Opportunity - Overall, the placement is high eCPM, low total revenue opportunity.
Frequency - It is best to limit the number of rewarded videos to five per day, per user. Also the option of watching the video should be capped in a fashion that the reward value earned doesn’t exceed that of in-app purchases.
Instead of making your user go through multiple hops to finally land on the storefront, expose it at the start of every session. Place ads at the upfront menu, giving non-paying store visitors easy access to watch a video in exchange for rewards like, coins, level up, and so on.
Discoverability - The low exposure rate of storefronts can be overcome by presenting users with an upfront storefront or menu.
Opportunity - The overall placement is high eCPM. And a significant jump in discoverability makes it a moderate revenue opportunity.
Frequency - Similar to the storefront, it is best to limit the number of rewarded videos to five per day, per user.
Make the experience of receiving rewards even more gratifying by giving gamers multiple reward options to choose from. One can also choose to introduce an element of surprise.
For instance in “Beat the Bad Guy”, where you can whack, shoot, zap and kick the Bad Guy there is an option during the game play where you can spin the wheel and earn reward in terms of coins or feature unlock.
The player taps on spin, watches a rewarded video ad
Post the video ad, the player has to spin the wheel to earn a surprise reward
This surprise element spikes the engagement amongst the players, as they look out for spin options in the lure of earning rewards
The multiple rewards also gives the chance to A/B test providing insights for future rewards and for optimizing in-app sales.
Instead of relying on the mundane virtual currency, you can incorporate creative rewards
For instance in “Tap Titans”, a Game Hive production where you as a hero try to bring peace to the land by vanquishing monsters. All you have to do is tap and tap faster to kill these monster. During the game play occasionally a fairy flies in carrying a reward with her.
When the player taps on the fairy, he can either get an option to watch a rewarded video in order to earn the pre-defined reward, or the reward is a free boost in the sword speed (can be very helpful to fight against the master) without any further action from the player
This essence of creating reward hierarchies always make player to look forward to the arrival of fairy, and is absolutely native to the gameplay.
Reward your users based on their progress in the game. For instance you can give loyal users bigger rewards.
Taking the example of two dots, a highly addictive game where you join two brave dots as they traverse the arctic tundra, navigate fiery jungles, and plunge the ocean depths.
Taking cue from the strategic placements of IAP,
imagine you are stuck at a level where you ran out of moves with one ice dot still remaining.
At this point in time, if you prompt user (specially for a non-paying user) to watch a video in order to earn an “ice pick” instead of mundane points, extra lives for future sessions, the gamer’s intent will be really high to opt-in for this video watch, and the experience will be really gratifying.
Impact on revenue (IAP):
For non-paying users who engage with Rewarded video: avg. 4.5% engage in IAP
For paying users users who engage with Rewarded video: avg. 9% engage in IAP