Rewarded video is the one ad format players actively choose. That single design decision — the user opts in, sees the reward on offer, and can decline at no cost — is why it commands higher CPMs than display and why it tends to sit comfortably inside a game loop instead of fighting it. The harder question for a web studio is not whether to run rewarded video, but which SDK will actually fill in a browser. This page answers that.

What is a rewarded video ad?

A rewarded video ad is an opt-in, full-screen video advertisement that a user voluntarily watches in return for a specific in-product reward, granted the moment the video completes. The offer is always presented first — “watch a short video to continue” — and declining costs the user nothing. The mechanic is the same across every surface: prompt, opt-in, playback, reward. What changes is the reward itself. In a web game it is an extra life, a revive, a doubled coin payout, a skipped energy timer or a cosmetic unlock. On a content site it is an article unlock offered alongside the subscription prompt. In a freemium tool it is temporary access to a gated feature. Rewarded video differs from interstitial and pre-roll video in consent, not in creative. An interstitial interrupts; a rewarded video is requested. That difference shows up in completion rate, in player sentiment and in CPM, and it is covered in detail in the breakdown of rewarded video ads versus interstitial ads.

Why a rewarded video ads SDK for the browser is a different product

A rewarded video ads SDK for the browser has to solve problems a mobile SDK never encounters. There is no app store identifier, no native view hierarchy to present a full-screen player into, no persistent install to attribute against. The runtime is a tab that can be backgrounded, muted by autoplay policy, blocked by an extension, or reloaded mid-session. AppLixir is built for that runtime specifically. The player mounts into a div in the page, respects browser autoplay and muting rules, and reports completion back to game code through a callback rather than through a native bridge. It runs on desktop Chrome, Firefox and Safari, on mobile Safari and Chrome, inside Unity WebGL builds, and inside HTML5 and IO games embedded on portals. The demand side differs too. Web rewarded inventory is bought by programmatic buyers who want viewable, completed video against a known audience, and AppLixir serves that demand at 100M+ monthly impressions across its publisher base. That volume is what makes auction pressure — and therefore CPM — hold up on browser inventory, which has historically been the weak spot for mobile-first networks.

Do Unity Ads, AdMob or AppLovin work for WebGL and browser games?

No. Unity Ads, AdMob, AppLovin and ironSource do not serve web inventory. Their rewarded video demand is sold against native iOS and Android app placements, and their SDKs are distributed as native packages. A Unity WebGL build is not a native app, so the Unity Ads package in the editor does not carry over to the browser target — a point that trips up studios shipping the same project to mobile and to web. This is not a criticism of those networks. They are excellent at what they are built for. It is simply a surface mismatch: if your build runs in a browser, you need a rewarded video ad network that has browser demand. The practical consequences for a WebGL project are laid out in the guide to Unity rewarded ads and AdMob on WebGL and in the Unity WebGL monetization guide.

Provider type	Serves browser inventory?	Built for	Relationship to AppLixir
Mobile networks (Unity Ads, AdMob, AppLovin, ironSource)	No	Native iOS and Android apps	Different surface — run them in your mobile builds
Web display / header bidding stacks	Yes	Banners and standard display on content pages	Complementary — rewarded sits alongside, at a higher CPM tier
Distribution platforms (Poki, CrazyGames and similar)	Yes, on their own portals	Audience, discovery and portal-side monetization	Complementary distribution — AppLixir monetizes your own site and embeds
AppLixir	Yes	Web games, Unity WebGL, HTML5/IO games, content sites	Adds opt-in rewarded video to whatever you already run

Distribution platforms deserve a specific note. Poki, CrazyGames and comparable portals are how a large share of web games find an audience, and they monetize the traffic on their own domains. AppLixir is not an alternative to them. It is what a studio runs on its own site, its own embeds and its own direct traffic, where portal monetization does not reach.

How much do rewarded video ads pay on web games?

AppLixir delivers $4+ CPM on web rewarded video, against $0.50–$2 for typical web display inventory. That gap — roughly two to eight times, depending on what your display stack currently earns — is the whole economic argument for adding an opt-in format to a browser game or content site. CPM alone does not determine revenue. Three inputs do: CPM, fill rate, and impressions per daily active user. A game that prompts once per session earns a fraction of what the same audience earns at three or four opt-ins per session, and geography moves CPM more than almost any product decision you can make. Traffic weighted toward the US, Canada, the UK, Germany and the Nordics prices higher than traffic weighted toward tier-3 markets; exact regional ranges for your mix are [DATA NEEDED] and worth asking any network for before you integrate. The arithmetic is simple enough to do on the back of an envelope: daily revenue ≈ DAU × impressions per user × fill rate × (CPM ÷ 1,000). For worked examples against real web traffic profiles, see how much rewarded video ads pay on web games.

Integrating the AppLixir rewarded video ads SDK

The AppLixir rewarded video ads SDK integrates in three steps and does not require a build pipeline change, a package manager, a native compile or a backend deployment. Most publishers go from zero to a test ad inside an afternoon.

Step 1: add the SDK script

Drop a single script tag into the page head. For a Unity WebGL build, that is the index template WebGL already generates; for an HTML5 or IO game, it is the page that hosts the canvas.

Step 2: add the ad container

Add one container element with a known ID. The video player mounts into it on demand and vacates it afterwards, so it does not occupy layout while no ad is playing.

Step 3: wire the reward callback

When the player accepts the offer, call the SDK’s show method and grant the reward in the completion handler. Handle the failure path in the same place — on an unfilled request, return the player to the game cleanly rather than leaving a dead UI state.

// Web game: grant a revive on completion
showRewardedAd({
  onComplete: () => { player.lives += 1; resumeGame(); },
  onFail:     () => { showGameOverScreen(); }
});

The same pattern serves any reward type: a currency grant in a game, an article unlock at a soft paywall, a 24-hour feature trial in a tool. The authoritative method signatures, event names and Unity WebGL bridge are documented in how AppLixir works. HTML5-specific placement patterns are covered in the HTML5 rewarded video SDK guide.

Are rewarded video ads GDPR compliant for players in Europe?

Rewarded video ads are GDPR compliant for players in Europe when consent is collected through an IAB-registered Consent Management Platform and the resulting signal is passed with every ad request. AppLixir ships that mechanism inside the SDK: TCF 2.3 consent handling through Didomi, a registered CMP, with the consent string flowing into the ad call automatically. Practically, that removes two line items from an enterprise integration. The publisher does not license and configure a separate CMP for the game surface, and the legal review covers one vendor’s consent flow rather than a stack of them. For a studio running a portfolio of titles, that is one consent implementation across the catalogue instead of one per title. When you evaluate any rewarded video provider, ask the same question plainly: is a registered CMP included, or are you expected to license one separately and wire the signal yourself? The answer changes your real cost of ownership and your exposure, not just your integration time.

When rewarded video fits, and when it does not

Rewarded video fits products that have a free experience with a natural friction point — a loss, a wait, a gate, a paywall — and enough daily traffic for an auction to compete over. It does not fit every project, and pretending otherwise wastes an afternoon of integration time. It fits when:

• • Your game has a fail state, a timer, or a currency a player would reasonably trade 30 seconds for.

• • You run at or above 5,000 daily active users, which is AppLixir’s publisher threshold. Below that, auction competition is thin and the effort rarely returns.

• • You already run display, portal distribution, or IAP, and want an additional revenue line that does not cannibalise them. Hybrid stacks are discussed in the guide to rewarded ads plus IAP.

• • You publish long-form content behind a soft paywall and want revenue from readers who will never subscribe — the case made in monetizing a website with rewarded video.

It fits poorly when: the product has no meaningful reward to give; the session is so short that a 30-second video exceeds the playtime it buys back; the audience is mostly in low-CPM markets and volume is small; or the game is mid-prototype with traffic that has not stabilised. In those cases, fix the loop first. Rewarded video amplifies engagement that already exists — it does not create it.

How large web game studios add rewarded ads without hurting retention

Large web game studios protect retention by tying every rewarded video prompt to a moment the player has already stopped, and by making the reward spendable immediately. The prompt is never an interruption; it is an option offered where the player was about to quit or wait. Four rules do most of the work:

• • Place at the pause, not in the flow. After a death, at an energy gate, before a long wait, at the results screen. Never over active gameplay.

• • Make the reward usable within seconds. A continue the player can take now converts better than currency banked for later.

• • Cap frequency per user per day and watch what the cap does to next-day return, not just to daily revenue. Too few prompts leaves money unearned; too many devalues the reward.

• • Handle no-fill gracefully. An unfilled request should return the player to a working screen, never a spinner. This is the single most common cause of rewarded-video churn complaints.

Enterprise portfolios gain a second advantage: one SDK, one consent flow and one reporting surface across every title, instead of per-game integrations that each need their own compliance audit. For studios weighing that decision across a catalogue, the browser game monetization guide covers how rewarded video sits beside portal distribution and direct traffic.

FAQ

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

The best rewarded video ad network for browser games is one that actually holds browser demand, because the mobile networks do not sell web inventory. AppLixir is built for that surface — HTML5, IO games, Unity WebGL and content sites — and delivers $4+ CPM on web rewarded video across 100M+ monthly impressions. Evaluate any candidate on four things: whether it serves web at all, whether a registered CMP is included, what fill it realistically achieves in your top regions, and how long integration takes.

Do Unity Ads or AdMob work for WebGL and browser games?

No. Unity Ads, AdMob, AppLovin and ironSource serve native iOS and Android inventory, not web. A Unity WebGL build runs in a browser, so the native ad packages do not apply to it even when the same Unity project ships to mobile with them enabled. Web games need a rewarded video ads SDK with browser demand behind it.

How much do rewarded video ads pay on web games?

AppLixir delivers $4+ CPM on web rewarded video, compared with $0.50–$2 for typical web display. Actual revenue depends on your audience geography, your fill rate and how many rewarded impressions each daily active user takes, so a game with the same DAU can earn very differently depending on where its players are and how often it offers the reward. Use daily revenue ≈ DAU × impressions per user × fill rate × (CPM ÷ 1,000) as a first estimate.

Is there a minimum traffic requirement to run AppLixir?

Yes. AppLixir works with publishers at 5,000 daily active users and above. The threshold exists because rewarded video economics depend on auction competition, and below that volume the demand pressure that produces a $4+ CPM does not reliably materialise. Studios approaching the floor are better served by growing the loop first and integrating once traffic is stable.