Unity: Global rewarded ad engagement rose by 3.2% in 2023

Rewarded video ad engagement in apps rose by 3.2% year-over-year globally in 2023, according to Unity’s Mobile Growth and Monetisation Report 2024.

Engagement with the format is said to be highest amongst word games, with 38.4% of daily active users watching rewarded ads. That’s followed by RPGs at 37.6% and casual at 36%. The lowest engagement rate came from sports and trivia, with 27.3% of DAUs engaging with the ads.

The report highlighted engagement based on where a rewarded ad is placed in a game and found that “context-sensitive” ad placements, like when a player runs out of resources, led to better engagement, with 38.1% of users watching these ads.

Meanwhile, placing a rewarded video ad between levels led to 23.8% of players engaging.

Unity claimed that games with more ad placements generated higher ad engagement. Titles with more than 15 ads saw engagement rates as high as 46%.

It should be noted that Unity runs its own Unity Ads business. The report draws data from Unity Cloud, Unity Ads, Tapjoy and IronSource.

Offerwall campaigns

When it comes to UA, Unity provided some data on offerwall performance. The report claimed that, compared to rewarded video and interstitials, users acquired through offerwalls have a 45.8% higher retention rate on day one, 86.1% higher retention on day seven, and 71.7% higher retention on day 14.

Analysing daily reward cost per engagement campaigns, Unity said lower friction tasks are more likely to yield better conversion rates. Finishing a tutorial, for example, had a nearly 100% completion rate. 

However, that percentage falls sharply for other tasks, such as 26.8% for engaging with multiplayer features and  8.9% for inviting friends. When asking a player to make an in-app purchase, conversion falls as low as 4.2%.