Rewarded video is the only ad format in games that the user actively asks for. The player presses a button, agrees to the trade, and gets something they wanted. That single opt-in step is why the format out-earns forced units, why it does less damage to retention than interruptive advertising, and why it became the default ad layer in free-to-play. What follows is how rewarded video ads work mechanically, how the format compares to the alternatives, what it pays on browser inventory specifically, and the placements where it is the wrong tool.

What are rewarded video ads?

A rewarded video ad is a short, opt-in video advertisement that a user chooses to watch in exchange for a defined in-product benefit, delivered only after the video completes. The player taps a button reading something like “Watch an ad for 100 coins”, a full-screen video plays, and the game grants the reward once completion is confirmed. Nothing is forced, nothing interrupts, and the price is stated before the impression is served.

Rewarded video is a value exchange format. The user is not an audience being sold to; they are a party to a transaction they initiated. Three properties follow from that, and all three come from the opt-in step:

• Consent. The user requests the ad. No impression is served to someone who did not ask for one, which is why completion and viewability on rewarded inventory sit far above forced formats.
• Completion gating. The reward is tied to a verified completion event, not to the ad opening. A user who abandons the video gets nothing. That makes the format attractive to advertisers paying for attention rather than exposure.
• Stated price. The player knows what the ad costs them and what it buys before they commit. The format fails the moment that contract is broken — an unclear reward, a reward that fails to arrive, or a “rewarded” unit that was actually mandatory.

The mobile app market is where most players first met the format. Candy Crush Saga sells extra lives and boosters for a view. UNO Mobile offers a 2x multiplier on coins won. Shadow Fight hands over a fixed quantity of gems. On the web the mechanics are identical, with the placements adapted to browser sessions: a continue in an IO game after a death, a skin or currency grant in an HTML5 puzzle title, a daily bonus on a game portal, or an unlocked article or tool use on a content site. Rewarded video is the backbone of browser game monetization for the same reason it took over mobile: it monetizes the enormous share of users who will never make a purchase.

How a rewarded video ad works, step by step

A rewarded video ad runs through six stages, from the moment the player sees the offer to the moment the currency lands in their balance. Getting any one of them wrong costs either revenue or trust.

1. The offer. The game surfaces a clearly labelled prompt that names the reward. “Watch a video” is weaker than “Watch a video for 3 gems” because the second one states the exchange rate.
2. Opt-in. The player chooses. If the video plays without a deliberate action, it is an interstitial wearing a costume, and it will be received as one.
3. The request. The SDK requests an ad. On a sold-out or unfilled request the game should degrade gracefully — grey the button, offer the reward through another route, never leave a dead control on screen.
4. Playback. The ad plays full-screen with game audio ducked. Once playback has started, closing it should not earn the reward; that constraint is the whole basis of advertiser pricing.
5. Completion callback. The ad server signals a completed view. This, and only this, is the signal the reward hangs off.
6. Grant and verification. The game credits the reward. For anything with real economic value — hard currency, cashout points, premium items — verify the completion server-to-server before crediting, because client-side grants are the first thing abuse tooling targets. See preventing rewarded ad fraud and reward abuse for the patterns worth defending against.

Two controls sit on top of this loop and decide how much it earns over a month rather than a session: a frequency cap, which limits views per user per day, and a cooldown between offers. Caps protect fill quality and keep the reward feeling scarce. Set them too tight and you leave revenue on the table; set them too loose and the in-game economy inflates until the reward stops motivating anyone.

Rewarded video ads vs interstitial, display and offerwalls

Rewarded video differs from other ad formats on one axis that drives everything else: whether the user agreed to it. Interstitials and display banners are served to the user; rewarded video is requested by the user. That difference shows up in CPM, in retention impact, and in how much placement work each format demands.

Format	User opts in	Typical web CPM	Retention impact	Best use
Rewarded video	Yes	$4+ CPM on AppLixir web inventory	Neutral to positive when placed on a reward beat	Fail states, currency walls, gated unlocks
Interstitial	No	Below rewarded on comparable web inventory	Negative if frequency is high or timing is poor	Clean session breaks, level transitions
Display banner	No	Roughly $0.50–$2 CPM for typical web display	Low per impression, cumulative over time	Persistent background revenue outside gameplay
Offerwall	Yes	Varies widely by offer mix	Neutral; engages a small, high-intent slice	Deep economies with large currency sinks

These formats are additive, not mutually exclusive. Most web publishers running display already have a rewarded layer available to them that they are not using, and the two do not cannibalise each other because they occupy different moments. The detailed breakdown lives in rewarded vs interstitial ads.

Do Unity Ads, AdMob or AppLovin work for web games?

No. Unity Ads, Google AdMob, AppLovin and ironSource are mobile app networks. Their demand is bought against app inventory, their SDKs are built for iOS and Android app binaries, and they do not serve browser inventory. A Unity WebGL build, an HTML5 game, an IO game or a browser-based content site cannot call them, regardless of how the game was authored. This is the single most common dead end for studios shipping their first web title: the monetization plan was written for an app store release and does not survive the port.

AppLixir exists to fill that gap. It is a programmatic rewarded video platform built for web games and content publishers — not a mobile SDK recompiled for the browser — and it runs in the browser with a JavaScript integration. If you are evaluating what carries over from a mobile stack and what does not, Unity rewarded ads and AdMob on WebGL works through the specifics.

Distribution platforms are a separate question. Poki, CrazyGames and similar portals bring players to your game and are complementary to a direct rewarded layer, not competitors to one. Many studios run both: the portal supplies traffic and its own monetization on portal traffic, while a direct AppLixir integration monetizes the sessions you own — your own domain, your own embeds, your own app-shell builds. The framing throughout is additive. AppLixir is a layer you add to what you already run.

How much do rewarded video ads pay on web games?

AppLixir delivers $4+ CPM on web rewarded video, measured across 100M+ monthly impressions, against roughly $0.50–$2 CPM for typical web display. That gap is the core economic case for the format: a single rewarded completion can be worth several display impressions, and the user chose to see it.

CPM alone will not tell you what a game earns, though. Revenue is a function of three numbers multiplied together: daily active users, the number of rewarded views each user completes per day, and the effective CPM on those views. A game with strong DAU and a single, awkwardly placed reward button will underperform a smaller game with three well-sited placements and a sensible cap. That is why placement work — covered below — returns more than network-shopping for most publishers.

The practical floor matters too: AppLixir’s minimum publisher threshold is 5,000 DAU. Below that, the honest answer is that no rewarded network will move your revenue meaningfully and your time is better spent on retention. For worked revenue models by traffic band, see how much rewarded video ads pay on web games.

Where rewarded video works, and where it does not

Rewarded video works where the session already contains a moment of want. If the player is stuck, out of currency, out of lives, or looking at something locked, the offer lands because it answers a problem the player already has. If no such moment exists, the format will technically function and earn almost nothing.

Placements that earn

• The fail state. A continue or extra life offered immediately after a death is the highest-intent moment in most web games, particularly IO and arcade titles where the run has accumulated value.
• The currency wall. The player wants an item and is short. A rewarded view that closes part of the gap converts, and it also surfaces the price of the item to a non-paying user, which is how rewarded video feeds purchase intent rather than competing with it.
• The gated unlock. A skin, a level, a hint, a double-reward multiplier at the end of a round. UNO’s 2x coin multiplier is the cleanest version of this pattern.
• Session return. A daily bonus doubled by a view gives a reason to open the game tomorrow.
• Content gates. For publishers rather than game studios, a view that unlocks an article, a calculator run or a download. Rewarded video for website monetization covers the non-game placements.

Placements that do not

A rewarded button on a main menu, disconnected from any pressure the player feels, is the most common wasted placement in web games. So is a reward so small it is not worth the time, or so large it destroys the economy and removes any reason to buy anything. And rewarded video cannot rescue a game nobody wants to play — if retention is broken, ads amplify a small number, nothing more. Quality of the game is upstream of every monetization decision.

Three design rules protect the format. Make the ad visually distinct from the game so the player never confuses an advertiser’s UI with your own. Keep the offer genuinely optional — the moment a “rewarded” unit cannot be declined, it is an interstitial and should be priced and placed as one. And never break the grant: a reward that fails to arrive after a completed view costs more trust than the impression was worth.

What the engagement evidence shows

The published research on rewarded video comes largely from the mobile app market, and it consistently points the same direction. VentureBeat reported that users were 4.5 times more likely to make an in-app purchase after engaging with rewarded ads, and that those users spent 326% more in-game than users who saw none. AList found a 53% 30-day retention rate among users who interacted with a single rewarded ad, against 12% for users who interacted with none, rising to 71% among users who engaged with seven. The direction of causality in studies like these is arguable — engaged players watch more ads — but the practical conclusion holds: rewarded viewers are not a segment you are harming.

The clearest evidence is what happens when the format is removed. When rewarded ads were pulled from Angry Birds Transformers, the player backlash was immediate. Players had come to treat the reward as part of the game’s economy, and taking it away read as a nerf. Equivalent published benchmarks for browser inventory specifically are thinner: [DATA NEEDED] for web rewarded completion and retention deltas. Rather than borrow mobile numbers and call them web numbers, the safer framing is mechanical — rewarded video adds a non-paying user’s only route to progression, and removing a route to progression is a design change, not just an ad change.

For studios running purchases alongside ads, the interaction between the two is the thing to model carefully; hybrid monetization with rewarded ads and IAP sets out where the two reinforce each other and where they collide.

How to add rewarded video ads to a web game

Adding rewarded video to a web game means loading the AppLixir HTML5/JavaScript SDK, giving it a container element to inject into, calling it at a player-triggered moment, and granting the reward inside the completion branch of the status callback. There is no native build step and no app binary involved — it runs in the browser.

initializeAndOpenPlayer({
  apiKey: "YOUR_API_KEY",
  injectionElementId: "applixir-ad-container",
  adStatusCallbackFn: (status) => {
    if (status.type === "complete") grantReward(); // only a completed ad earns the reward
  },
});

The important line is the conditional. The reward is granted on a completed status and on nothing else — not on the call being made, not on the player closing the player. Everything beyond this call, including configuration and the full set of status handling, is in the AppLixir documentation.

On the engine side, the pattern is the same whether the game is a hand-written canvas title, a framework-based HTML5 game or a WebGL export: the ad call lives in the page’s JavaScript layer and communicates with the game through whatever bridge the engine already provides. Adding rewarded video ads to an HTML5 game walks the integration end to end, including the fallback path for unfilled requests.

Are rewarded video ads GDPR compliant for players in Europe?

Rewarded video ads can be served compliantly to players in Europe, provided consent is collected and signalled to demand partners before the impression. AppLixir has TCF 2.4 and GDPR compliance built in via Didomi, so the consent string is gathered and passed as part of the ad request rather than being something the publisher has to assemble.

For enterprise studios, this is usually the part of a web monetization decision that takes longest, because it involves legal review rather than engineering. The practical point is that the consent layer is not a separate vendor you need to procure and wire in alongside the ad SDK — it ships as part of the integration. Publishers with their own consent management platform already deployed should raise that during onboarding so the two do not collide.

FAQ

What is a rewarded video ad in simple terms?

A rewarded video ad is an advertisement a user chooses to watch in exchange for something specific — in-game currency, an extra life, a level skip, access to gated content. The reward is granted only when the ad server confirms the view completed. It is the only common ad format where the user requests the impression rather than having it served to them.

What is the best rewarded video ad network for browser games?

For browser games the practical shortlist is limited to providers that actually serve web inventory, which rules out Unity Ads, AdMob, AppLovin and ironSource. AppLixir is built specifically for web games and content publishers, delivers $4+ CPM on web rewarded video across 100M+ monthly impressions, and requires a minimum of 5,000 DAU. Distribution platforms such as Poki and CrazyGames sit alongside a direct integration rather than replacing it.

Do rewarded video ads hurt retention?

Correctly placed rewarded video does not hurt retention, because the player opts in and receives something they wanted. The published mobile research points the other way, with AList reporting markedly higher 30-day retention among users who engaged with rewarded ads. Retention damage comes from forced units, poor timing, and rewards that fail to arrive — not from the opt-in format itself.

How much do rewarded video ads pay compared to display?

AppLixir delivers $4+ CPM on web rewarded video, against roughly $0.50–$2 CPM for typical web display. The two formats are additive rather than alternatives: display runs in the background of a session while rewarded video monetizes specific high-intent moments. Total revenue depends on DAU, views per user per day and effective CPM together, not on CPM alone.