What Counts as Incentivized Traffic?
Incentivized traffic is any traffic where the user gets something for taking an action. Someone installs a game from an offerwall and gets 500 gems in the puzzle app they were already playing. Someone signs up for a budgeting app through a rewards platform and earns a few dollars toward a gift card. The reward might be in-app currency, a discount, or cash, but the idea is the same. Most of this traffic comes through offerwalls, rewarded video, and referral programs.
The money moves the same way almost everywhere. You pay the platform when a user completes the action you asked for, and the platform shares part of that payment with the user. The real differences come down to what you actually pay for.
Paying per install is the oldest model and still the cheapest. It’s also the one that earned incentivized traffic its bad reputation, since plenty of those users open the app once, collect the reward, and never return. Most modern offerwalls charge per event instead: a reward for finishing the tutorial, another for reaching level 15, another for the first purchase. Playtime platforms go further and keep paying users while they keep playing, sometimes for weeks. Task-based platforms like IPweb let you define the action yourself, whether that’s a visit to a landing page, a registration, or a specific step in your funnel.
As a rule, the later in your funnel the reward kicks in, the more those users behave like people who found you on their own. Someone who plays long enough to hit level 15 has usually decided they like the game, reward or not.
Why Rewarded UA Is Growing
The numbers show the trend. AppsFlyer’s Performance Index data shows that on Android, the number of incentivized networks in the global top 20 by install volume grew from three in 2023 (Mistplay, Tapjoy, and adjoe) to five in 2024, with AdAction and Gamelight joining. Of the roughly 79 ad providers named in the index, 16 (about 20%) sell incentivized traffic.
Singular’s ROI Index 2025 shows the same pattern. Rewarded platforms Almedia, Exmox, KashKick, and Prodege account for four of the top 14 scaled Android gaming partners, and incentivized providers make up 10 of the 34 networks on its growth leaderboard.
The Best Incentivized Traffic Sources, Reviewed
Scale figures below come from the companies themselves. Use them to size a platform, not as independent audits.
Tapjoy from Unity
Tapjoy is the best-known offerwall, now part of Unity. It works as an in-app rewarded marketplace that connects advertisers with publishers, and you pay only when a user completes an offer. You can optimize by ROAS or by your position in the offerwall.
Daily Rewards is the feature to look at. It rewards users for in-game tasks such as clearing a level or winning a battle, which brings them back each day to earn more. Unity reports that in beta, apps using Daily Rewards saw a 6% average increase in unique daily users converting on offers. In Unity’s own case studies, King beat its D7 ROAS target by 1.5x with Daily Rewards, and Springcomes saw Merge Sweets installs triple while D7 ROAS passed 50%.
Choose it if: you run a game with a clear progression funnel and want event-based bidding at scale.
adjoe Playtime
adjoe built its business on rewarded playtime. Users earn in-app rewards for installing promoted apps and staying active in them over time. For advertisers, campaigns optimize for post-install engagement and long-term retention rather than raw installs. adjoe’s main pitch is the contrast with a classic offerwall, which rewards a single action such as an install, a tutorial, or a purchase.
adjoe says it took 41 rankings in AppsFlyer’s 2025 Performance Index, including a top-six spot in the Global iOS Gaming Power Ranking, and that it’s the largest rewarded network by volume on both iOS and Android.
Choose it if: your game earns most of its LTV after the first week and you’re judged on D30 metrics.
Mistplay
Mistplay is a loyalty app for mobile gamers. Users discover new titles and earn points as they play. It rewards players for time spent in games and uses AI targeting based on player behavior and spending. In practitioners’ channel mixes, Mistplay is typically optimized for IAP and ad ROAS rather than installs.
Choose it if: you’re targeting North American players who already treat rewards as part of how they find new games.
Prodege
Prodege runs Swagbucks, InboxDollars, and MyPoints. It reports 20 million monthly active users, over $2.2 billion in rewards paid out, and loyalty programs in more than 70 markets. More than 200 studios use it for rewarded campaigns, surveys, and offers. Its audience isn’t limited to gamers, so Prodege is one of the few large rewarded sources that also makes sense for non-gaming apps.
Choose it if: you need reach in mature Western markets, or your app isn’t a game.
Almedia (Freecash)
Almedia’s Freecash went from newcomer to one of the biggest names in rewarded UA. Advertisers pay only when users complete meaningful in-app actions, such as reaching a level or making a purchase, and Almedia passes part of that payment to users. The company says Freecash has paid users more than $500 million and has reached a $1 billion annual revenue run rate.
It’s also the clearest example of platform risk in this category (see below).
Choose it if: you’re a large gaming advertiser that wants volume on deep-funnel events, and you’ll spread budget across other partners too.
KashKick
KashKick is a US rewards app where users earn cash through mobile games, surveys, and interactive experiences. Users earned nearly $20 million on the platform in 2024. After strong growth in the US, it’s expanding into the UK, Canada, and Australia.
Choose it if: you’re focused on the US and want an alternative to the largest rewarded platforms.
TyrAds
TyrAds runs its own rewards platform and reports more than 40 million monthly active users worldwide. UA practitioners use it alongside Prodege and adjoe for multi-event bidding.
Choose it if: you want multi-event campaigns with global reach.
Exmox and Playio
These two newer platforms are worth testing once your core partners are running. Exmox, based in Hamburg, uses a rewarded playtime model built around IAPs and deep-funnel engagement. Playio appears in practitioners’ channel mixes as a playtime source bought on CPI.
Choose them if: you’re scaling rewarded UA and need more sources so you aren’t dependent on one or two partners.
IPweb
IPweb doesn’t work like the other platforms here. There’s no offerwall inside someone else’s game and no rewards app for users to browse. You create a task, and real people complete it for a reward. The platform has been running since 2004, and every user who completes a task has a unique IP address, so you’re not paying for a farm of devices on the same connection. Most campaigns ask users to visit a specific page or register, and you can choose which countries to target and at what times of day the tasks run.
For app marketers, the main draw is the audience. IPweb’s users are English-speaking, which puts them in the same markets most rewarded UA budgets are aimed at. You reach them through a task you wrote, not an offer type a network has already defined. If what you need is “visit the landing page, tap through to the store, and create an account,” that’s the task.
That control also makes IPweb a convenient place to start. Before you commit budget to a large network, you can send a few hundred real users through your landing page or onboarding and see where they drop off. The trade-off is scale. IPweb won’t deliver hundreds of thousands of game installs a week the way adjoe or Prodege can, so it works better as one focused channel in a wider mix than as your main source of volume.
As with every other source in this guide, keep the rewards tied to actions in your product. Paying users for app store ratings or reviews breaks both Apple’s and Google’s rules, whichever platform you use.
Choose it if: you want English-speaking users to complete actions you define yourself, or you need a low-risk way to test your funnel with real people before scaling elsewhere.
What Apple and Google Actually Allow
Before you launch, know where the line is. It isn’t the same on both stores.
Google Play
According to the Google Play User Ratings, Reviews, and Installs policy, developers may not try to manipulate an app’s placement on Google Play. That covers inflating ratings, reviews, or install counts through incentivized reviews and ratings, and making the installation of other apps the app’s main function.
Google has also said that incentivized installs can be a legitimate acquisition channel. Its target is installs bought only to push rankings, which it filters out, including by removing apps from top charts (Android Developers Blog).
Apple App Store
Apple is stricter, though the rules got clearer in June 2025. Under guideline 3.2.2(x) of the App Store Review Guidelines, apps can’t force users to rate, review, or download other apps to access content or features, but they may otherwise incentivize specific actions inside the app, such as completing a level or watching an ad.
Offerwalls have triggered iOS rejections before, usually because the offers encouraged users to download other apps for rewards. This is why many rewarded platforms route iOS users through web-to-app flows.
The short version: you can reward people for using your app. You can’t reward them for rating it, reviewing it, or installing it just to move up the charts.
How to Judge Whether a Source Is Working
Measure rewarded cohorts on their own
Don’t run rewarded users through the same ROAS curves you use for Meta or Google. Rovio’s UA team keeps ROAS as its main KPI but says retention matters far more for rewarded traffic than for other channels. Rewarded users spend and retain differently, so they need their own ROAS predictions, and early results that look too good usually deserve suspicion.
Track these metrics for each partner:
- D7 and D30 ROAS
- D7 and D30 retention
- Cost per target event, not cost per install
- Activity after the last rewarded milestone: do users keep playing once the reward is gone?
Ask whether the traffic is mixed
AppsFlyer has long warned that some networks blend lower-quality incentivized traffic into regular inventory to increase reach. Ask each partner what share of its volume is rewarded, and make sure it’s labeled clearly in your MMP.
Treat vendor benchmarks as a hypothesis
Unity reports that offerwall users retain 40% better than other users at D7, D14, and D30. That may or may not hold for your game. Independent sources point out that incentivized traffic typically shows lower long-term retention and LTV than non-incentivized traffic. Trust your own cohort data.
The Risks to Plan For
Fraud
Any channel that pays users in money attracts fraud. AppsFlyer’s State of Fraud for Marketers 2026, covering 106.4 billion installs across 246,000 apps, found that organic traffic now accounts for 52% of fraudulent installs, and that the fraud gap between affiliates and self-reporting networks reached 36x in Q1 2026. If organic installs jump during a rewarded test, check them before you count it as a win.
Basic safeguards:
- Turn on MMP fraud protection before launch, not after.
- Pay for post-install events, never for installs alone.
- Set daily caps by partner and by geo.
- Watch for duplicate IP clusters and unusually high click-to-install rates.
Platform risk
The Freecash case in 2026 shows how fast a channel can disappear. Apple removed the app after a media inquiry, citing its rules on scams, bait-and-switch tactics, and misleading marketing, and Google pulled it from the Play Store on April 15, 2026. Almedia disputed the coverage but admitted that some affiliates had run misleading TikTok ads earlier in the year. The app returned to Google Play in early May and to the App Store on June 17, 2026.
Advertisers with campaigns running at the time lost the channel overnight. The lesson isn’t to avoid rewarded UA. It’s to spread your budget across several partners so that losing one doesn’t stop acquisition.
A Simple Plan for Your First Rewarded Test
- Pick one target event that predicts D30 retention or a first purchase.
- Test two or three source types at once, for example an offerwall, a playtime platform, and a task-based platform like IPweb, to see which format fits your product.
- Set up attribution and fraud rules in your MMP before you spend anything.
- Start small: one or two geos with daily caps.
- Read cohorts at D7 and D30, separately from your other channels.
- Scale the partners that clear your retention bar and keep testing new ones in parallel.
FAQ
What is the best incentivized traffic source for mobile games?
It depends on how your game makes money. Offerwalls like Tapjoy suit games with clear progression milestones. Playtime platforms like adjoe and Mistplay suit games where value builds over weeks. Most mature UA teams run several in parallel.
Is incentivized traffic worth it for non-gaming apps?
It can be, but there are fewer options. Platforms with broad audiences, such as Prodege, and task-based services such as IPweb are the usual starting points. Tie rewards to registration or a first transaction, not the install.
Are offerwalls allowed on iOS?
Apple allows rewards for in-app actions under guideline 3.2.2(x). Offers that require users to download other apps have led to rejections, so many rewarded platforms route iOS users through the web.
Can I reward users for leaving an app review?
No. Both Apple and Google prohibit incentivized ratings and reviews, and violations can get your app removed from charts or from the store.
Should I buy incentivized traffic on CPI or CPE?
CPE in most cases. Paying for a meaningful in-app event filters out users who only want the install reward. CPI is fine for quick tests and not much else.
How do I spot low-quality rewarded traffic?
Look for strong D1 numbers that drop sharply by D7, unusually high click-to-install rates, clusters of installs from the same IPs, and users who go inactive right after the last rewarded milestone.
Conclusion
There’s no single best incentivized traffic source. There’s a best fit for your app, your geos, and your KPIs. Tapjoy and adjoe are strong defaults for games. Prodege, KashKick, and Almedia give you large reward-driven audiences. Newer playtime platforms help you diversify. IPweb is a practical option for reaching English-speaking users through custom tasks, especially for web actions, registrations, and low-budget tests. Whichever you choose, pay for in-app events instead of installs, judge each partner on its own cohort data, keep fraud protection on from day one, and never reward ratings or reviews.
Ready to run your first test with real users? Create a task on IPweb and pay only for completed actions.
Internet Marketer
