Rewarded user acquisition has grown up fast. What started as a niche tactic now eats up at least thirty percent of mobile UA budgets on many campaigns. So how do you make it pay?
Zino Rost van Tonningen, CEO of TyrAds, has a clear answer. He sits down in a podcast with Matej Lančarič, Host of Two & A Half Gamers to talk about the three rewarded UA personas. He breaks players into three personas, then mixes them up for profit.
If you want to hear the full conversation, find the complete podcast here.
Zino runs TyrAds, a company built around rewarded ad platforms and rewarded traffic. In his words,
“TyrAds is a company specialized in rewarded platforms and rewarded traffic. What we do is we basically reward users to play games or reward users to do certain actions like subscriptions.”
TyrAds plugs into third-party apps and games with an app monetization solution. It also runs its own products, Tyr Rewards. This dual position, both buying and selling rewarded traffic, gives Zino a rare view of what actually drives results.
This year brought a big change. As Zino put it:
“First off, we launched our own platform and that platform is completely built in-house so it gives us a lot more capabilities of testing, experimentation, and really understanding where the audiences are performing well.”
Rewarded user acquisition means to pay users with in app rewards to try other games or complete actions. The system operates on a value exchange model that is where users get rewards for engagement. A player watches an ad or plays a new game. Then, they earn coins or currency back in their original app after they reach a specific level or complete a required action. This benefits all. Advertisers get installs and engagement. Publishers get revenue. And players get rewards.
The old name for it was incentivized traffic. Today, people call it rewarded UA. Zino sees the change as more than just a relabel. The market has matured, funnels got smarter, and segmentation became the new battleground. It is now the core of an effective rewarded UA strategy for many marketers.
Here’s the heart of Zino’s thinking. Not everyone who taps an offerwall user acquisition behaves the same way. Zino explained:
“You don’t have a singular user that engage with an offerwall. Each user will have a different type of behavior and that behavior basically dictates how they will perform and what your LTV curve will be.”
TyrAds groups players into these three personas. Each persona has its own rhythm. Reward hunters spark quick returns, gamblers spend aggressively, and casual users compound slowly over time. Knowing the difference changes how you reward them. Let us explain:
This user chases rewards and nothing else. Zino described this one as:
“That wants to go for rewards, maximizing his own earnings that he can get.”
These players hop from app to app. Zino compares them to coupon hunters who collect deals for the thrill of saving. They convert fast, but their loyalty stays thin.
This player wants fun and community. Zino called this:
“A user that just casually wants to play some games, wants to look for a community really, wants to engage a little bit, and is one that will play a game for a very long period of time, but might not be the most aggressive of users.”
They are slow burners, stick around for months and quietly build long-term value with consistently rewarded gameplay.
This is the big-spender persona. Picture the jackpot at the top of a slot machine. Zino described the gambler as the one:
“That will actually spend whatever they need to do to get to the big rewards because they’re in it for the game.”
These players push hard for the biggest prizes, much like the classic whale.
TyrAds does it with AI-driven labeling on its new platform. Every user gets tagged based on behavior.
Zino explained the system plainly:
“On our new platform we label all our users. The labeling system is automatically done based on the data that we receive from users with AI.”
Think of it like a systemizer for traffic. A new user arrives, the machine learning models read their behavior and the platform drops them into a segment. Once labeled, that audience becomes targetable. You can then test different reward structures through rewarded gameplay strategies against each segment.
That targeting feeds straight into experimentation. As Zino described it:
“You can actually use that audience and select that audience and then experiment with different funnels based on that audience.”
Different funnels for different people, all measured against real performance.
Here is a counterintuitive lesson from Zino. More high spenders are not always better. TyrAds gets paid out by partners and pays out rewards. Get the mix wrong, and the math turns ugly.
Zino was direct about it:
“We don’t make any money on these types of users because they spend like crazy and they cost us a lot of money.”
The fix is the balance. Combining all three personas keeps campaigns healthy. Zino summed up the goal: segmenting and connecting users together:
“Basically, make it profitable for advertiser. Make it profitable for us. And then also make it profitable for the user.”
This three-way win is the point of the whole system.
Segmentation can only work when you test against it. TyrAds runs three main types of A/B tests:
The live ops piece performs especially well because it spots exactly where players drop off and re-engages them through rewarded progression ways.
The surprise factor makes it stick. Zino described how the platform reacts when a player moves fast. He said:
“When a user does like level hundred in three days we can then push that user to say, Okay you just did level hundred in three days, right? That’s amazing. Why don’t we try level two hundred in seven days?’ But we don’t tell them, the user is just an extra surprise that comes in.”
The same logic applies to spenders. Once a player gets labeled a gambler, TyrAds can hand them tougher, richer challenges to push value even higher. Smart triggers, real-time, all driven by behavior.
Most rewarded user acquisition buyers run on KPIs like a day-7 ROAS target from Google Ads or Facebook. TyrAds connects its segmentation to those goals through recommendation models.
If a campaign falls short, the system reacts automatically. Zino explained:
“If we see that those targets are below what we need to have. We know that we need to get certain audiences sent to those games to actually achieve those results. And that’s all automatically done by the models now.”
The bigger dream is full automation. You set a day-7 target, and the system assigns the right funnel to the right persona. As Zino put it:
“I’m going to go give this reward funnel to the reward hunter, that funnel to the social user, and that funnel to the gambler, and then see how we can maximize the results and volumes at the same time.”
A mobile game monetization that aims to balance revenue evenly between in app purchases and ads raises an important question. Where do you start? Zino has a practical playbook.
He suggested aiming for purchasers first:
“That would be about 10% to 15% user base to actually start purchasing.”
Those buyers then go on to spend more, “two to three times” over. That group represents your gambler segment.
Next come the volume players. You need plenty of social users and reward hunters to maximize ad-based value. Reward hunters and gamblers deliver speed. As Zino noted:
“Those are the ones that are going to make the ROI much easier for you.”
The casual user plays the long game. They are a social user who’s going to be playing for months. So, why does that matter so much? Because compounding value lets you bid harder. Zino laid out the dream scenario:
“I had 70% on day 30, right? But on day 90, I had that to 120. And then from day 60, it was 150.”
As for the mix itself, the gambler is rare. Zino said the gambler segment “is always much lower. It’s by 5 or 10% of users.”
The split between social users and reward hunters tends to sit closer to even. You can start even on a budget. Zino confirmed the minimum is around 500 dollars, though more spend gives the models more room to work.
TyrAds is doubling down on gaming. The reason relates back to the personas. Reward apps are full of reward hunters, which skews the mix. Gaming audiences bring more casual players and more gamblers, the whales who already love playing.
That focus led to a notable partnership. TyrAds signed Nordeus, makers of a long-running hit, as an exclusive monetization partner. Zino said, “We just signed them exclusively with us.” This means Nordeus works with no other offerwall user acquisition partners.
Even better, the deal blends first-party data. TyrAds integrated Nordeus audiences into its platform. So, it can segment using the studio’s own data alongside its own signals. That richer data sharpens every recommendation.
Zino sees two big shifts ahead. First, more consolidation as partners merge ad tech. Second, a move toward ROAS-based campaigns built on recommendation models. He expects rewarded platforms to feel more like AppLovin or Google, where you set a target and let the system work.
His closing logic was simple. Better data plus smarter segmentation equals better targeting. Anyone slow to build that kind of platform risks may fall behind. Zino joked, “two and a half steps behind.”
So, these are the takeaways for mobile app marketers who want to improve their user acquisition strategies:
Not all rewarded users behave the same way.
Partner with TyrAds to identify, segment, and acquire the users that drive long-term value.
