Incentivized Advertising Networks

Incentivised mobile ad networks are platforms which allow app developers and mobile advertisers to reward a user for an action. The user is required to complete a specific task in exchange for a prize, such as virtual currency. In other words, engaging with ads is encouraged and rewarded, rather than being an action that a user performs at their own discretion. The key advantage here is that there is an incentive; users are less likely to find mobile advertising to be intrusive to them if they are part of the process themselves.

There are of course disadvantages as well: not all app users will want to perform the task. Some argue that incentives don’t work that well in categories such as productivity and utility, as these types of apps are functional, are less driven by hits and are used more frequently – for example a fitness app that is used every day. The average user of an app like this most likely wants to get into their daily fitness program, not click certain ads or watch branded videos.

Mobile gaming is a category where incentives have proved to be popular on the other hand. An in-game prize can directly help the player to advance in their game, or they can be rewarded with an exclusive bonus, such as a weapon or costume. These two areas then, incentives and mobile gaming, are a natural fit and have proven to work together.

There’s also burst campaigns and incentives. Burst campaigns are when an app marketer decides to focus a significant amount of their ad spend over a short period of time. The aim is to increase the visibility of the app on the respective app stores, resulting in downloads and installs for the app marketer. Getting featured in one of the app stores ‘top paid’ or ‘top free’ categories can propel an app at lightning speed. Users are often rewarded for installing the app during a burst campaign with virtual rewards too – a win-win situation.

The app users that are acquired during these campaigns can sometimes be low lifetime value (LTV) users, meaning they don’t stay around for long. It must also be said, however, that incentivised mobile ad networks can deliver just as high quality LTV users as other types of mobile traffic do.
Pros and cons aside, we thought it would be useful to assemble a list of some of the key incentivised mobile ad networks out there and put them all into one place. From TapJoy to TinyLoot, our list should help out app advertisers, app developers and anyone else interested in the incentivised model.

Incentivized Ads Guide

Incentivized ads reward users upon the completion of actions, such as installing an app, completing a video ad view or engaging with an app in some other way. The reward for this is often virtual currency, a game item, an upgrade or a discount on a product.

Incentivized ads example (Source: Appsflyer)

Incentivised Ads eCPMs

Here are some of the biggest incentivized ads offers along with their platform and country in the table below.

Source: Vungle, Admob, Blognife

List of incentivized traffic sources and app advertising platfroms