Do you still treat rewarded traffic like a cheap install machine? Unfortunately, this mindset is now a liability.
TyrAds has been working in rewarded since 2020, back when the model was a blunt instrument. Also, the whole point was just to push volume at the top of the funnel. The data backs the shift. Over 90% of marketers have tried rewarded and 60% stick with it. The reason? The channel now does real work across user acquisition, monetization, and engagement at the same time.
In this MobileGroove interview at MAU, Zino Rost van Tonningen sits down with Peggy to break down the shift in rewarded advertising. He also explained how brands can turn rewarded users into long-term assets.
If you want to hear the complete conversation, find the full podcast here.
The old approach to rewarded traffic relied on simple progression. This means you built a multi-step funnel. The goal was to push towards specific milestones and count the early events as wins. But that structure does not pay off anymore.
Zino put it plainly, “The old way of rewarded is dead, basically.” The mechanics that once worked now flatten your returns. A rigid milestone funnel pulls users toward a single action and nothing more. So, engagement dries up the moment that action is complete. Your lifetime value curve stops climbing, then drops.
Also, the shift is not about doing the old thing better. It is about doing something fundamentally different with how you engage people. Zino is direct on this point:
“Everything really has changed in terms of engaging users further than just what the normal offerwall would be able to provide.”
That single line reframes the whole channel. For example, a standard offerwall that only serves offers and counts completions leaves most of the value on the table. The work now sits in how you target users and match the right reward.
It sits on all three things: UA, monetization, and engagement. However, it now requires another skillset that was not needed a few years ago.
Zino names the missing piece directly:
“It’s UA, it’s monetization, but it’s also really live ops that’s really changing the game right now.”
That live ops influence is what separates modern rewarded from the static offerwall of the past. Think about what it did inside games. It turned one-time launches into running systems of events, rewards, and timed offers that help players come back.
The same logic also drives rewarded video ads. You run experiments and adjust reward structures. Then, you react to the live performance instead of setting one funnel and walking away.
This is why a single team rarely covers it well. The channel asks for UA thinking, monetization discipline, and live ops creativity at once. Teams that keep these functions in separate silos struggle to react fast enough. And slow reaction costs them user retention and revenue.
The biggest mistake Zino sees is treating every rewarded user as one undifferentiated group. Most marketers run a single offerwall structure and call it a day. That approach caps your performance before you start.
Zino explains:
“You’re going to have to understand that there are different types of personas within rewarded.”
Each persona responds to a different reward structure. This means one reward design cannot carry the whole funnel. As he warns,
“A singular reward structure is not really the thing that’s actually going to be engaging the users for a long period of time.”
Proper audience segmentation starts with three core rewarded personas. Zino lays them out clearly:
The personas only work as a system. The balance between them is the most important.
Zino is blunt about the stakes:
“If you don’t have a bit of all three of those, right, you’re not going to get a good performance out of rewarded.”
You have to consider what happens when the mix tips too far in any direction because the wrong mix can turn your math ugly.
This is why you should not judge a rewarded traffic strategy on early numbers alone. Read the balance and the mix together. A campaign that looks weak in week one might carry a strong gambler cohort that compounds later. At the same time, a campaign that looks strong early might be top-heavy with hunters who vanish.
Persona thinking only delivers if your partner can act on it. This is where most of the decision actually sits.
Zino explains:
“The most important part is your partner that you’re working with.”
The question to put to any provider is whether they can:
That’s because you cannot extract the full value of the channel if they cannot target the personas or understand the segments.
Here’s what you need to ask a strong rewarded traffic partner:
The newest gain in traffic comes from combining signals. The whole user becomes one in a connected experience when a publisher’s first-party data connects with a partner’s behavioral signals.
Zino describes the Tyrads and Nordeus partnership as proof of this. A publisher brings segments like:
Then, TyrAds runs currency experiments against each segment to find what lifts engagement and revenue. The two data sources together create paths that neither side could build alone.
The biggest practical gain is transparency. Publishers have long suffered from unexplained revenue swings. Zino names the fix directly:
“We can actually tell them exactly this is the reason why you’re dropping in terms of performance.”
Now, you can see the specific persona is dragging results, exclude it, and protect your overall mobile app monetization.
This visibility is really important because reactions without understanding are just guesswork. As Zino raises the question:
“If you don’t know why something is dropping, how do you fix it?”
Many teams stop their campaigns after they see a dip. However, they should adjust the segment that is responsible for the dip. First-party data turns a blind pause into a targeted fix.
Campaigns rarely break because the channel is weak. They break because communication between the UA team and the partner breaks down.
Zino is candid about the failure point:
“Rewarded fails when you stop working together with your rewarded partner.”
Therefore, the better path is to find the exact point where users drop off. You can then fix that specific moment in the funnel.
The laziest approach reuses one event structure across every platform without optimization for each platform to present an offer. Different platforms display rewarded video ads and in-app rewards in different ways. And those differences move performance just as much as a creative does.
The strongest teams treat rewarded traffic as a testing discipline. They don’t set it as a one-time channel.
Zino sums up the smart approach in one line:
“The smartest way they will test using audiences and segmenting the audiences and AB testing on those audiences.”
That is the method that has worked behind everything above. Here is a practical way for you to test your traffic:
The studios stuck in the old playbook are running off the road. Rewarded has grown into a channel that combines acquisition, monetization, and live ops. These three factors are connected into a single system. So, the teams that treat it that way will pull ahead.
Also, you should build for all three personas. Work closely with a partner who can act on audience segmentation and read your data before you react. That is how you keep the LTV curve climbing.
Peggy closed the conversation perfectly:
“So they (marketers) have to get smarter and we’ve had a very smart conversation”
If you need any assistance, feel free to reach out to TyrAds. We can help you optimize your strategy to boost your ad revenue.
