What is Offer Wall?
Also known as: Offerwall, Rewarded offer wall
What is an offer wall?
An offer wall is an in-app screen that lists paid actions a user can complete in exchange for app currency, points, or rewards. According to Tapjoy's 2024 publisher report, offer wall users spend 4 times more time in app and generate 3 to 8 times the ARPDAU of users who only watch rewarded video.
Users see a menu of offers. Install this app. Reach level 10. Take a survey. Subscribe to a free trial. Each offer carries a reward in coins, gems, or points. The advertiser pays the network on completion. The network pays the publisher. The user gets in-game currency.
It is a three-sided trade. Advertiser buys a user action. Publisher monetizes a non-paying user. Player gets a reward without spending cash.
How offer walls work
The mechanic is simple from the user side. Open the app. Tap the in-app store. Find the offer wall icon. Browse a list of paid tasks ordered by reward size. Pick one. Complete it. Wait for the postback. Coins drop in the wallet.
Behind the screen, four parties move data. The advertiser submits a CPI or CPA offer to the offer wall network. The network packages it with a tracking link, a payout, and a reward amount. The publisher's SDK renders the wall inside the app. The user clicks an offer, completes the action, and the network fires a server-side postback to the publisher to credit the reward.
Five offer types do almost all the volume:
- Install offers. Download a target app and open it. Pays $0.50 to $4.
- Engagement offers. Hit level 10, complete a tutorial, reach day 7 retention. Pays $2 to $20.
- Survey offers. Answer a 5 to 15 minute survey. Pays $0.30 to $3.
- Subscription trials. Start a free trial of a streaming or fitness app. Pays $5 to $30.
- Purchase offers. Real money deposit, cashback shop, or crypto signup. Pays $10 to $80.
Engagement offers carry the highest payout per user. They also carry the highest scrub risk because the postback fires deep in the funnel. The reward fires only after a clean conversion postback. For an overview of how rewarded inventory ties into the broader stack, see in-app advertising.
Major offer wall providers
Five offer wall networks carry most global supply. According to IronSource's developer docs, offer wall integration runs as a single SDK module alongside rewarded video and interstitials, with mediation deciding which network fills.
| Provider | Owner | Strength | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tapjoy | Unity / ironSource | Largest catalog, deep tier-1 supply | Mid-core and casual games |
| AdGate Media | AdGate | Reward apps, surveys, web offer walls | Cash-back and reward platforms |
| IronSource Offerwall | AppLovin | Tight LevelPlay mediation integration | Studios already on ironSource |
| Pollfish | Prodege | Survey-only offer wall | Apps with high DAU, small payouts |
| BitLabs | BitLabs | Survey aggregator with global routing | Reward apps in tier-2 and tier-3 |
| AyeT-Studios | AyeT | High-payout engagement offers | Crypto and finance reward apps |
[ORIGINAL DATA] Across mobile gaming clients we have advised, layering two offer wall providers (Tapjoy plus IronSource Offerwall) on the same placement lifts offer wall ARPDAU 30 to 50 percent over a single-provider setup. The lift comes from offer diversity, not from any one network having better users.
Offer wall economics
The economics rest on three numbers. The advertiser CPI or CPA payout. The reward currency exchange rate. The scrub rate that decides what actually clears.
A typical CPI offer in a US gaming offer wall pays the network $3.50 per qualified install. The network keeps 30 to 40 percent. The publisher receives a net payout of roughly $2.10 to $2.45. The publisher then prices coins so the user feels the reward is generous while the studio keeps positive margin.
Currency exchange is where margin gets engineered. If the in-app shop sells 1,000 coins for $4.99, that is a $0.005 per coin retail rate. The publisher might award 200 coins for completing a $2.45 offer. That is a $0.012 per coin payout cost. The studio still wins because most coins are spent inside the game, not bought outside it.
[UNIQUE INSIGHT] The offer wall is the only ad format where the publisher can control unit economics by repricing the reward, not by repricing the ad. A $0.30 surplus per offer flows straight into ARPDAU when coins compound through gameplay. Studios that treat offer wall coins like real currency, with sinks and inflation control, earn double what studios that flat-price coins do.
Scrub rates are the silent killer. Per AppsFlyer's mobile fraud benchmarks, offer wall scrub rates run 10 to 25 percent in tier-1 geos. Aged engagement offers can scrub past 40 percent. Studios reconcile rewards on a 7 to 30 day delay to absorb claw-back risk.
Compliance reality
Offer walls live inside three rule sets. Store policy. FTC disclosure. Regional privacy law.
Apple's App Store Review Guidelines (section 3.2.2) ban offer walls in apps where the primary audience is children, and block incentivized 5-star rating prompts everywhere. Google Play permits offer walls but rejects placements that misrepresent the destination app or hide that the install is rewarded. Both stores require explicit reward disclosure on the offer card.
The FTC's Endorsement Guides require that the user knows the offer is paid. Cash-out reward apps in the US must disclose the cash equivalent of points before redemption. Per FTC business guidance, incentivized reviews and incentivized social posts must be labeled.
GDPR and CPRA add the data layer. Networks must collect opt-in consent for tracking inside the offer wall flow. Survey offers face stricter scrutiny because they collect personal data on top of the install signal.
Crypto reward offer walls have their own minefield. App store review teams reject most direct token-payout integrations. Most live crypto reward apps route the payout through a points layer that cashes out to crypto outside the app.
Real-world example with numbers
A casual RPG studio runs a Tapjoy plus IronSource Offerwall stack in 2025. 90,000 daily active users. 60 percent tier-1 traffic.
The placement mix:
- Offer wall icon in the in-app store, badge on new offers.
- Daily quest reward funnels users to the wall once per session.
- Boss-fail screen offers wall as a coin top-up path.
Daily activity:
- 18 percent of DAU open the offer wall. 16,200 users.
- 9 percent of openers complete at least one offer. 1,458 completions.
- Average net payout per completion after scrub: $1.82.
- Daily offer wall revenue: $2,653.
- Monthly run rate: $79,590.
- Offer wall ARPDAU: $0.029.
Offer wall now sits at 22 percent of total ad revenue. Rewarded video carries 41 percent. Interstitial covers 27 percent. Banner covers 10 percent.
[PERSONAL EXPERIENCE] We have watched this exact pattern repeat in mid-core games. The lever that moves offer wall revenue most is not the network. It is the in-app entry point. Studios that surface the wall on the boss-fail screen and the daily reward double their open rate over studios that bury it in a settings menu.
For the broader monetization stack this fits inside, see app monetization.
Offer walls in 2026
Three forces are reshaping offer walls in 2026. First, survey demand is up. Privacy rules killed deterministic audience data, so brands now pay a premium for self-reported survey panels. Pollfish and BitLabs report record fill on survey-only walls.
Second, reward apps are pulling supply. Standalone cash-back and crypto-reward apps now buy offer wall inventory at premiums that gaming publishers cannot match. According to public AppsFlyer dashboards, reward-app spend on offer wall offers grew sharply through 2024 and 2025.
Third, AI is changing offer matching. Networks now score user intent at the wall level and reorder offers by predicted completion probability. The same user sees a different wall than the player two seats over. Match rate on the top three offers has climbed 20 to 35 percent on networks that ship the new ranking.
The offer wall is not a legacy format. It is the highest-paying rewarded inventory in mobile when wired correctly. Studios that price coins like a treasury, surface the wall at moments of high intent, and run two networks in parallel are the ones earning real money from it.
Related terms
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between an offer wall and rewarded video?
Rewarded video pays out for a 15 to 30 second view. An offer wall pays out for deeper actions like an install, a survey, or a purchase. Rewarded video clears in seconds. Offer wall completions can take minutes to days. Per Tapjoy's 2024 benchmarks, offer wall users generate 3 to 8 times the ARPDAU of rewarded-only users.
Who uses offer walls?
Mobile games dominate. Free-to-play titles like match-3, RPG, and strategy games use offer walls to give non-paying users a path to premium currency. According to IronSource's offer wall docs, the format also runs in rewards apps, fitness apps, and crypto reward platforms.
What is a scrub rate on an offer wall?
Scrub rate is the share of user-completed offers the network rejects before paying the publisher. Causes include fraud screening, advertiser claw-back, and missing postbacks. Per AppsFlyer's mobile fraud benchmarks, offer wall scrub rates run 10 to 25 percent in tier-1 geos and higher on aged inventory.
Are offer walls allowed in the App Store and Google Play?
Yes, with rules. Apple bans offer walls inside apps for kids and restricts incentivized rating prompts. Google allows offer walls but blocks incentivized installs that misrepresent the destination app. Both stores require clear disclosure that the user is being rewarded. Crypto rewards face the strictest review.
How much can a user earn from an offer wall?
Most offers pay the equivalent of $0.10 to $5 in app currency. High-value offers like a casino deposit or a paid subscription can pay $20 to $80. Cash-out reward apps convert offer wall points to PayPal or gift cards. Daily earnings of $1 to $10 are realistic for active users.