Rewarded Video Ads

Like any other ad unit, you can expect your revenue from rewarded video ads to vary based on your audience. Many factors go into determining what rewarded video ads are capable of earning for you, including:

• Audience size: Either your total page views as a website publisher or your daily active users as an application will have a major impact on your average CPM.
• Geography: Like with any ad unit, the geographic location of your audience has a huge impact on your average CPM for rewarded video ads.
• Device: The device your audience is using will also have a pretty strong impact. Rewarded video for apps has been around for quite some time, so average CPMs for mobile devices are relatively stable. For the web, many SSPs are just beginning to recognize rewarded video ads as premium inventory, and CPMs will shift as the industry starts to standardize around it.
• Technology: Even within categories of devices, the tech used will influence CPMs. For mobile devices, iOS tends to drive higher CPMs than Android. For the web, different browsers will drive different CPMs. And for games, different formats (e.g. console, PC, etc.) will all drive different CPMs.
• Audience data: Any information you have on the interests, behaviors, and make-up of your audience can help advertisers pinpoint the type of users they want to reach, all of which can help you command higher CPMs for your rewarded video ad units.

While each publisher should expect their potential rewarded video ad revenue to be unique to them, we have gathered some statistics to help you estimate where your revenue might fall.

In general, you can expect rewarded video ads to generate 4x the CPMs than traditional video ads deliver or more. So if you are already doing video advertising, you can expect rewarded video ads to command at least 4x higher CPMs.

Rewarded video ads can be incredibly lucrative, but injecting them into your user experience is as much of an art as it is a science. When adding rewarded video ads into your monetization strategy, follow these steps first:

1. Determine what you offer users that are most valuable: Understanding which features, content, or sections of your site that offer real value to users is the most important step in the process.
2. Pick one item to test on: Select one item of value (or one category of content) and start small. Add a rewarded video ad as a gate to entry for that particular item.
3. Test, test, test: Make sure to exhaustively test your unit to ensure that the user experience is perfect.
4. Watch the results: Let the test run for a couple of weeks and see how users are interacting with your rewarded video ad. Is the reward large enough to drive conversion? What is the conversion rate?
5. Iterate: Test variations of your ad based on the results. If your conversion rate is low, you can test increasing the value of the reward or shortening the length of your ad. If your conversion rate is very high, you can test increasing the length of the video to see if you can get more from each conversion.
6. Expand: Once you feel confident on your first test, you can expand your strategy to other user experience inflection points that you identified in step 1.

There are some key best practices that are useful to know as you are first working rewarded video ads into your user experience that will help ensure success on your first go.

1. Make the reward worthwhile.
2. Make the experience clear and straightforward.
3. Clearly articulate the expected reward to the user.
4. Take over the full screen when displaying the video ad.
5. Test different video lengths.
6. Make sure you can employ custom triggers.
7. Use house ads for backfill.

Learn more here.