Rewarded video and an offerwall get compared constantly, usually by someone deciding which to integrate. It is the wrong question. They earn from different people, in different amounts, at different frequencies, and the apps that do best run both.
The shape of each
A rewarded video pays a fraction of a cent per view. Anybody will watch one. Thirty seconds, no commitment, no personal details, and the reward lands immediately. Completion rates are high because there is almost nothing to complete.
An offer pays somewhere between a few cents and twenty dollars. Almost nobody will do one. It takes real effort — an install, a registration, a level, a purchase — and the reward may take a day to arrive.
Put crudely: video is a thousand users earning a little, an offerwall is ten users earning a lot. Both add up. Neither replaces the other.
Who does which
The split is not random. On most rewarded products, a small minority of users generate the large majority of offerwall revenue, and they are usually the same people who were already your most engaged users. They want the currency badly enough to work for it.
Everyone else watches videos. They want the currency too, but not enough to install a game to get it.
If you only run video, you are earning a fraction of a cent from the users who would happily have earned you five dollars. If you only run a wall, you are earning nothing at all from the majority who will never complete an offer.
Where each belongs in the product
Video works as an interruption you offer at the moment of need — the user is out of lives, out of hints, one item short. It is impulsive, and it should be one tap away from the thing they wanted.
A wall works as a destination. It is a place users go deliberately when they want a meaningful amount of currency, and it deserves a permanent entry point: a button in the shop, an "earn" tab, a link from the empty balance. Burying it in a menu is how a wall earns nothing — not because it does not work, but because nobody found it.
The numbers to actually compare
Do not compare payout per action; the wall wins by two orders of magnitude and it tells you nothing. Compare revenue per active user per day for each, over the same period, for the same audience.
That number accounts for the thing that matters: how many of your users will do the thing at all. A wall with a spectacular payout and a one per cent participation rate can easily earn less than video that everybody uses — and the reverse is just as common. You cannot reason your way to the answer for your audience; you can only measure it.
Two numbers worth watching on the wall specifically:
- Click-to-completion rate. If users are clicking a lot and finishing nothing, the wall is showing offers your audience cannot complete — wrong country, wrong device, requirements too heavy.
- Repeat participation. A user who completes one offer and never returns had a bad experience, usually a credit that took too long or never came.
When a wall is the wrong call
Three cases, honestly:
- A tiny, scattered audience. Offer availability depends on country and device. A few hundred users spread thinly will see a sparse wall and conclude your app is broken.
- Currency with nothing to buy. If a user cannot see what the coins are for, they will not work twenty minutes for them. Video survives this; a wall does not.
- No way to take a postback. Crediting by hand does not survive the first busy week.
None of those are arguments for video instead. They are things to fix, and then run both.