Mobile rewards platform Kiip believes it’s cracked the code on making non-annoying mobile video ads with its new Rewarded Video offering. Now, advertisers that use Kiip to reward people for in-app activities will be able to show video ads in the same instance.
If people are mildly annoyed by mobile display ads, they positively hate mobile video ads, especially the kind that auto-play and take over your screen. And then there are the ads that force you to view them in order to get to the next level of your game or a video you want to see.
“Everyone is talking about using mobile video ads, but no one was doing it right,” says Kiip CEO Brian Wong. “In fact, we refused to carry video ads on our platform because most of them were annoying and not up to our standard.”
Wong says the only way for Kiip to start deploying video was to make sure they were non-intrusive and they served the rewards being offered, not the other way round. In other words, the main promotional item is still Kiip’s in-app rewards, and the video accompanies the reward screen as an optional level of engagement for the customer.
Here’s how Rewarded Video works. Mobile users could be using a fitness app or playing a video game, and when they achieve a certain level, or accomplish a task, Kiip surfaces a reward from a brand, such as a discount coupon for Gatorade, or discounted tickets to a sports equipment store. This has been Kiip’s current advertising model. Now, when the app surfaces the reward, it will also show the thumbnail of a video from the same brand. This could be an advertisement, a movie trailer, or a custom made video. The movie has to be clicked to be played, and the app user does not have to play it to take advantage of the rewards.
Here’s a video from Kiip explaining more:
Introducing Kiip Rewarded Video from kiip on Vimeo.
Wong says Rewarded Video has already successfully been tested by a few of Kiip’s advertising clients. AMC’s popular zombie drama The Walking Dead used it to show a short teaser video for its fourth season, while Trident Gum used it to show a short 15 second video ad. Wong says the initial results from Rewarded Video have been extremely promising, with view-through rates hitting an average of 77%, well above the industry average.
For developers, Rewarded Video is an additional monetization opportunity tool. Kiip says developers that have used the product already have seen CPMs as high as $30, nearly quadruple the $8 industry average. To add Rewarded Video capabilities to an existing Kiip integration, developers only have to alter a single line of code in the SDK.
