5 Reasons to Monetize Your App with Rewarded Video

With thousands of new apps being launched every year, it has become very difficult to keep users engaged with your app for long periods in such a competitive market. The app industry uses two key parameters to judge the success of any app – user engagement and user retention.

User engagement refers to the amount of time a user spends on the app or how active users are on the app. This is usually measured in the number of sessions an average user dedicates to the app. An app with an average of over 10 sessions per month is usually considered to have high user engagement. User retention, on the other hand, tries to measure the percentage of people who return to use the app within 3 months of their first session.

It is essential for any app to score high on both these parameters to gain long-term success. One of the most efficient ways to increase your user retention and app engagement is to monetize your app with rewarded video.

Rewarded video ads not only help users spend more time on your app but also let you earn from users who rarely or never make any in-app purchases. In this article, I give you 5 reasons to monetize your app with rewarded video.

What are Rewarded Video Ads?

It is necessary to clearly understand how this monetizing process works before talking about its benefits. Users on your app will be rewarded with in-app benefits like access to locked items, virtual currency, level-ups, etc. in exchange for watching a short app-trailer. Once they complete watching the trailer 100% voluntarily, they will do one of two things – click on the video to download that app, or skip directly to collect their reward. If any user chooses to install the app, you will be paid a certain fixed amount. So, the more downloads, the more you earn. In case the user just skips to collect the reward, this will at least ensure his or her continued interest in the app. In many cases, it has also led to people with no history of in-app purchases to start buying from the app.

5 reasons to monetize your app with rewarded video:

1. Earn from non-paying users

Though many new apps start big and go viral, few of them are able to sustain the long road by making users engage in in-app purchases or upgrading to the paid version of the app, if it exists. This is where rewarded video ads can help. For example, a user is actively using your game app but reluctant to make necessary in-app purchases to advance beyond a certain level. For you, this is a cause of worry because he will eventually get bored of staying at the same level and quit using your app.

Instead, if you reward such a user with essential in-app benefits for simply watching app trailers, chances are he will do so to play the game for a much longer time. And if such users happen to install apps of their interest from such ads, it will only create a new and steady stream of revenue for you.

2. Increase your in-app purchases

Monetizing your app with rewarded video is a great way to boost your in-app purchases. Every app has its share of users who never make any kind of in-app purchases. However, once they are treated with in-app rewards to experience the more exclusive features of the app, they can be made to initiate in-app purchases.

The key is to strike a balance between the in-app benefits being offered as rewards, and those being reserved exclusively for purchase from inside the app. Once the users recognize the value of the in-app rewards and see how it is enhancing their experience of the app, their appetite for more in-app benefits is bound to increase, which will boost up your in-app purchases.

3. No limit on earning from ads

Rewarded video content is being generated by a vast number of apps, including big name brands like Pepsi and Candy Crush, and other smaller but successful companies. The amount of money varied from app to app, but you can earn up to $5 for each download with some apps.

As long as you ensure that the in-app rewards are proving beneficial to the users, they will return to watch more rewarded video ads, and the chances of them downloading the featured apps will also increase. The more downloads you can manage from users consistently, the more you will earn. And the best part is that there is no limit to how much you can earn from this stream.

4. Increase your user loyalty

With new apps coming in daily for every thinkable purpose, it has become very tough to ensure user loyalty for longer periods, even for the most successful of apps. However, you can take advantage of monetizing your app with rewarded video to turn things in your favor. If you start offering in-app rewards that enhance the UX of your app to be much better than your competitors, not only will users keep coming back to your app regularly, but will also not mind spending time watching more app-trailers.

You can also incorporate seasonal in-app rewards to offer your users a new reason to come back every few weeks or months. For example, you can offer users a limited-time Christmas theme in December that can be unlocked exclusively by watching an app trailer.

5. A clean and non-annoying advertising method

Nothing bugs app users more than ads that pop-up unexpectedly on the screen. This not only ruins the user experience but also compels the user to look for alternative apps to get the job done, in most cases. But if you choose to monetize your app with rewarded video, you do not have to worry about any such thing.

Because a user voluntarily chooses to unlock an in-app benefit by watching an app trailer, he or she is making a conscious decision to view an ad. This ensures that their user experience is not botched in any way, and they are in fact being rewarded at the end of the process. This will help you preserve the reputation of the app, and not lose business due to annoying advertising practices.

Conclusion

Monetizing your app with rewarded video content is a very efficient video advertising platform to accomplish three major goals: increasing user engagement, elevating user retention and creating a steady inflow of ad revenue. Conventional app advertising, on the other hand, is perceived as annoying and is known to drive away users. The key to gain maximum benefit from rewarded videos is to offer valuable in-app benefits that are sure to add to the user’s app experience. This will also help you increase your in-app purchases in the long run.