Rewards Matter: Consumers Like Video Ads Best When Rewarded

Online viewers are happy to pay attention to ads—when they're rewarded for their time.

Mobile ad platform AdColony has released the results from its 2017 Consumer Sentiment Survey, and they show one dramatic way to make ads acceptable to consumers: offer rewards. When presented with rewarded video ads 40 percent of consumers say they find the ads acceptable. That's nearly twice as many as find playable ads (22 percent) acceptable. Those two are followed by banner ads at 21 percent, interstitial video ads at 19 percent, and in-feed ads at 17 percent.

Rewarded ads play at full screen, and offer in-app rewards in exchange for watching.

"Simply put, rewarded video is the most accepted ad format among consumers, and this was true across all age groups," wrote Barbie, AdColony's director of marketing, in a blog post. "On average, consumers were twice as likely to find rewarded video ads to be acceptable than any other ad format."

Exploring viewer sentiment further, the survey finds consumers are most receptive to ads when they're at home or at a friend's house. The one place consumers never want to see ads is when dining out.

Ad Colony surveyed people who were using apps at that moment, questioning them about their mood. It found that people playing mobile games were in the best mood, while those using social apps were in the worst mood. It might be time to remove social apps from marketing campaigns: People using social apps were 3.2 times more likely to be in a lousy mood when compared to the average app-user. Also, they were twice as likely to be in a poor mood as people using news apps.

The survey also dives into gaming apps, finding that 87 percent of consumers have games on their phone, with most having between 1 and 9 games installed.

Ad Colony surveyed over 1,500 consumers in North America and Europe. View the full report for free (registration required).

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net