What Are Rewarded Video Ads? A Guide for Web Publishers
What Are Rewarded Video Ads? A Guide for Web Publishers
A rewarded video ad is an opt-in ad format: the user is offered a specific reward — coins, an extra life, a hint, a level unlock, an ad-free reading session — in exchange for watching a short video, usually 15 to 30 seconds. They see the offer first and can decline at no cost. That single design choice separates rewarded video from every interrupt-based format on the market.
Everything else that people say about the format follows from the opt-in. Users who chose the ad watch it to the end. Advertisers pay more for attention that was volunteered. Publishers see less churn because nothing was taken from the player without asking. The format is not magic; it is a trade that both sides agreed to before it started.
What Are Rewarded Video Ads?
Formally: a rewarded video ad is a full-screen, non-skippable video that the user actively triggers, in return for a defined in-product reward that is granted only on verified completion. Three properties have to be true for the unit to count as rewarded:
The offer is stated before the ad. “Watch a video for 50 coins.” The user knows the price and the payout.
Declining is free. No penalty, no delay, no blocked progression. If refusing costs the user something, it is not rewarded video — it is an interstitial with extra steps.
The reward is verified. The reward fires on a completion callback from the ad player, not on a timer or a click, which is what keeps the economy honest.
The format grew up in mobile games — “watch an ad to continue” after a failed level is the canonical example — but it is not a games-only unit. Publishers use it to unlock a gated article, extend a trial, refill a usage credit, or buy a block of ad-free listening. Any product with a resource the user wants more of can run rewarded video. The reward does not have to be virtual currency; it has to be something the user would otherwise wait for or pay for.
How the Value Exchange Works, Step by Step
From the user’s side it is two taps. From the implementation side there are five stages, and knowing them makes the placement decisions later in this piece much easier.
Preload. The ad is requested and buffered in the background so that the video starts instantly when the user opts in. A rewarded prompt that spins for four seconds after the tap converts badly.
Offer. Your UI presents the trade in plain language. This is your surface, not the network’s, so the wording and the reward size are yours to tune.
Playback. The video plays full-screen with a visible countdown. The close control appears at the end, or after the advertiser’s minimum view duration.
Completion callback. The player fires a success or failure event. Success means the video ran to completion; failure means the user closed early, the ad failed to fill, or playback broke.
Reward grant. You grant on success only. For anything with real economic value — soft currency, entitlements, tournament entries — validate server-side before you credit the account.
That last step is where most abuse gets caught. If the reward is granted purely client-side, it can be granted by anyone with a console open. Our guide to preventing fraud and abuse in rewarded video covers server-side validation, rate limiting, and the signals worth logging.
Why Rewarded Video Pays More Than Display
The economics are not subtle. Typical web display inventory — banners, sidebars, in-content rectangles — delivers somewhere in the range of $0.50 to $2.00 CPM. Rewarded video on web inventory delivers $4+ CPM on AppLixir. The gap exists because the two units sell different things. A banner sells a slot on a page a user is scrolling past. A rewarded video sells thirty seconds of a user who raised their hand and asked for it.
The second-order effect matters as much as the CPM. Because rewarded ads only run when the user asks, they do not add to the interruption budget you are already spending on the rest of your ad stack. A 2025 Deloitte and Google AdMob study of 7,000 mobile gamers found that ad quality and ad experience weighed more heavily on player satisfaction than raw ad frequency — the problem is rarely that there are ads, it is that the ads take something the player did not offer. Earlier Unity survey work found the large majority of players preferring an ad-supported free experience over paying upfront, provided the ads respected their time.
The practical consequence: rewarded video is one of the few units where increasing engagement and increasing revenue point the same direction. Players who value the reward come back to earn it again. For a fuller breakdown of what the format is actually worth per impression and per DAU, see the complete guide to eCPM optimization for web games.
These are not mutually exclusive. Most mature web games run rewarded video alongside display, and some add interstitials at genuine break points. If you are deciding between the two video formats specifically, the head-to-head numbers are in rewarded vs interstitial ads.
Why Web Rewarded Video Is a Different Problem
Almost every article about rewarded video is written about mobile apps, because almost every rewarded network is a mobile network. Unity Ads, AdMob, AppLovin and ironSource are all excellent at what they do, and what they do is serve native iOS and Android apps through a compiled SDK. They do not serve the browser. If your game runs in a tab — an IO game, an HTML5 title, a Unity WebGL build, a browser-based puzzle site — those SDKs are not an option, no matter how good their fill is elsewhere.
That is the single fact most web studios discover the hard way, usually after a week of trying to make a mobile integration guide apply to a JavaScript codebase. The browser has its own constraints:
No install, no device ID. Targeting and frequency capping work from web signals, not from a mobile advertising identifier.
Autoplay and audio policies. Browsers restrict unprompted video with sound. A rewarded unit is fine because the user gesture triggers it — but the implementation has to be built around that gesture.
Consent, up front. European traffic needs a valid TCF signal before a personalized ad request goes out. AppLixir handles TCF 2.3 and GDPR compliance through Didomi, so the consent layer is part of the integration rather than a separate project.
Ad blockers and iframe contexts. Web games are often embedded on portals, which changes what the ad player can do inside the frame.
A network built for the browser handles these by default. A mobile SDK wrapped in a web shim generally does not. If you want the side-by-side on the mobile networks and where each one actually serves, we keep an updated comparison of AdMob, AppLovin, Unity Ads and ironSource.
Where to Place Rewarded Video in a Web Game or Site
Placement determines opt-in rate, and opt-in rate determines revenue far more than CPM does. The rule is simple: put the offer where the user already wants something.
In games
Continue after failure. The highest-intent moment in any game. The player just lost a run they were invested in; an extra life is worth thirty seconds to them.
Currency top-up at the shop. Offered next to the IAP, not instead of it. Players who will never pay still generate revenue; players who will pay often do both.
Energy or timer skip. Trading a video for a wait is the cleanest exchange in the format.
Reward doubling at run end. “Watch to double your 120 coins” converts well because the reward is already quantified on screen.
Cosmetic or hint unlocks. Low-stakes, high-frequency, and they do not distort the balance of a competitive game.
On content sites and tools
Unlocking a metered article instead of hitting the paywall.
Buying a block of ad-free browsing or listening.
Extending a free tool’s daily quota — extra exports, extra conversions, extra generations.
Downloading a gated asset without handing over an email address.
Publishers outside gaming often underrate this. The mechanics translate directly; only the reward changes. There is more detail in our guide to rewarded video ads for website monetization.
Integrating Rewarded Video on the Web
For a browser-native integration, the work is measured in an afternoon rather than a sprint. The shape of it:
Add the script. A single tag in your page or WebGL template loads the ad player.
Initialise with your zone ID. One call, with your account identifier and any options you want set — reward text, close behaviour, language.
Wire the trigger to your UI. Your “Watch for 50 coins” button calls the ad function. Nothing else in your game should be able to call it.
Handle the callbacks. Success grants the reward; failure states — no fill, early close, playback error — need their own path. Never grant on error, and never leave the player stuck on a black screen if the ad does not load.
Validate server-side. Confirm the completion event before crediting anything of value.
Unity WebGL builds follow the same pattern, with the JavaScript bridged into C# through a plugin file. Engine-specific steps are in the Unity WebGL monetization guide, and the platform-level view is on how AppLixir works. One practical gate to know about: AppLixir’s minimum publisher threshold is 5,000 daily active users, which is the point at which programmatic demand can be filled consistently enough to be worth your integration time.
Best Practices and the Mistakes That Cost Revenue
The format is forgiving, but it can be broken in predictable ways.
Do not gate progression behind it. The moment a player cannot advance without watching, the ad stops being optional and starts being a toll. Opt-in rates fall and churn rises.
Cap frequency per session. Even a wanted ad becomes noise at high volume. Set a ceiling and measure whether raising it moves ARPDAU or just impressions.
Price the reward against your own economy. If a video pays out more than a small IAP, you have built a reason not to pay. If it pays out almost nothing, nobody opts in.
Preload before the moment. Request the ad while the level is still running, not when the fail screen appears.
State the reward exactly. “Watch a video for 50 coins” outperforms “Watch a video for a bonus.” Ambiguity reads as a trick.
Instrument everything. Track offers shown, opt-ins, completions, and reward grants as separate events. The drop-off between offers and opt-ins tells you the placement is wrong; the drop-off between opt-ins and completions tells you the delivery is.
What Rewarded Video Adds to What You Already Run
Rewarded video is additive, not a replacement strategy. It sits on top of display, in-app purchases, subscriptions, and portal revenue share without cannibalising any of them, because it monetises a segment those channels miss: users who will spend attention but not money.
That includes distribution. If your game is on Poki, CrazyGames or a similar portal, those platforms are doing something AppLixir does not do — bringing players to your game and handling their own ad experience on their domain. Rewarded video on your own site, your own embeds, and your own direct traffic runs alongside that. Studios routinely operate both, and the portal audience and the owned audience are different money.
With 100M+ monthly impressions running across web inventory, the demand side of web rewarded video is no longer thin the way it was a few years ago. The blend that works for most studios is a hybrid one: IAP for the small paying share, rewarded video for the large non-paying share, display for baseline coverage. Hybrid monetization models for free-to-play games covers how to balance the three without the units fighting each other.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is rewarded video, in one sentence?
An ad the user chooses to watch — typically 15 to 30 seconds, full-screen — in exchange for a stated reward that is granted when the video completes, with no penalty for declining.
Do rewarded ads work outside of games?
Yes. Any product with a resource the user waits for or pays for can run the format: article unlocks, ad-free sessions, extended tool quotas, trial extensions. The mechanic is identical; only the reward changes.
Can I use Unity Ads or AdMob for a browser game?
No. Those networks serve native iOS and Android apps through compiled SDKs and do not deliver rewarded inventory to the browser. Web games, HTML5 titles and Unity WebGL builds need a rewarded ads platform built for the web.
How much traffic do I need before rewarded video is worth integrating?
AppLixir’s minimum publisher threshold is 5,000 daily active users. Below that, programmatic fill is inconsistent enough that the revenue rarely justifies the integration work; above it, $4+ CPM on opt-in inventory compares favourably with the $0.50–$2.00 typical of web display.
Related Blogs
The Hidden Cost of Pre-Roll Ads: Why Rewarded Video Wins on Engagement and Retention
