Rewarded Grows Up: Why Monetisation Now Shapes The Model

like keystone events or boosted events that we want people to reach just like they would in a game.
We've always been a steady a steady beast kind of just purring along and our focus has been on ensuring we're driving high performance for our clients who are game publishers and ensuring we're driving a really high quality experience for our users and making sure they're getting the right rewards at the right time and a really personalized experience.
Hello and welcome back. We are here at the pocketgamer.biz podcast with myself, Peggy Anseltz, and Craig. Craig Chapel, my co-host, who has been epic today. I think it's your third podcast today, is it not, Craig?
Uh, yeah, I'm running on a few podcasts now, probably per day. Uh, it's all got to be about video these days. So, you know, it's wonderful to be on the podcast. So, hello everybody.
And and your and your weekend and your your weekend mobile, you know, your mobile games rap is also rocking it. So yeah, this is over on the sort of the the weekly bit, but you guys also do a

great rap. So great to have you.
Yeah, be sure to check it out after you listen to this episode.
Yes, we will do a shameless plug now. But no, seriously, it is good. And we'll have it in the show notes. So today we're going to talk about a topic that's been out there, right Craig? It's rewarded but it's not the rewarded we know because when we started this conversation couple years back rewarded was like hey it had arrived as a UA channel it drives installs it drives engagement it scales but since then interestingly enough the market has changed and now we're in what sensor tower is calling the monetization first era right it's not just are we getting players it's what are we getting them to do. Are we driving deeper engagement? And that is where a little bit of the tension comes in because rewarded was about UA. The future is about monetization happening deeper in the journey. So that's what we're going

to look at today. We're going to look at not where this is, but where this is going. And to look at that evolution, it makes sense to talk to people who have seen it firsthand. Francesca Red David. She is VP of product growth at Misplay. And what's interesting here is that Francesca, you didn't start in product. You started in advertising. UA life cycle marketing. So you have seen it from all sides. And of course that's the holistic perspective we need. So we're lucky to have you. So welcome. Great to have you.
Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here on you guys.
Then we've got Aaron. Aaron Tendy is chief commercial officer at Misplay and you've seen it because you've you know been there done there been there done that bought the t-shirt 15 years across adte so you're sitting at that intersection Erin of UA performance commercial growth so you are a perfect fit here and again great to have you

great to be here and great to see you again Peggy thanks
something's different you know rewarded had its moment and then that moment moment has shifted as I said monetization feeling like it's the prize but what genuinely feels different about rewarded right now I'll start with you Francesca
what genuinely feels different about rewarded is our desire to be a first class channel for user acquisition and with that we've been focusing on deeper monetization deeper for engagement and I think that's different than the way you what rewarded was treated in the past or seen in the past which was as you mentioned a little bit about top of funnel engagement as a source users but now uh I think we are seeing rewarded as

not only a source to acquire new users but also to acquire high quality users that will stay and retain those Erin, you have anything to add there?
Like you said, I've been doing this a long time. Reward has been around for a while. It's had many different names. Um, but in this current moment in time, I think it's really solidified itself as a key part of marketers, UA channels, and UA's mix, right? UA managers, marketers are always looking to diversify the mix. What? It's always been there a little here and there. There's been tests,
there's been pauses, But now as we've rolled through to I would say 2024 going into 2025 and now into 2026 I think it's firmly positioned in the stack and we've seen that share of wallet significantly grow year-over-year in terms of the piece of the pie uh that game publishers are allocated to reward and I think that speaks to uh its success its scale its growth and as

Franchesca mentioned its quality of the users it's now driving through Um, tweaks needed, but I think it's a tremendously exciting time.
Craig, how about you? I mean, here we are little, you're a little bit of an OG. Absolutely. You've been covering Rewarded and UA for years. Um, are they right? You know, is this what you're also seeing? What studios are maybe talking about that Rewarded is, yeah, it's here, but it's maybe different. It was about two years ago uh London and it was there where it was like oh like rewarded UA is like kind of here and there was a few new companies as well popping up it became quite highly competitive so there's quite a lot of buzz around it
you know it did have several names and there was also you know back in the days when it was incentivized and we didn't talk about it too much so let's level set for everyone listening in um defining rewarded in super simple terms

What is it really for someone in our audience who might not specialize in it, might not have done it yet, but is certainly wondering what all the excitement is about
for those who haven't been exposed to it, which I'd be surprised. I think everyone's probably dabbled in it a little bit over the years. Essentially, you know, the idea is giving players, users a place to discover new games and as they then choose to engage with those games, play those games, spend in those games, they are getting rewarded for it. And I think in everyday life, there are rewards everywhere, right? I personally choose to buy things on my Chase Sapphire card instead of my debit card cuz I want my points. I fly with United because I'm part of their loyalty program. And so when it comes to gaming, uh it's a case of if you're going to do it anyway, you're probably going to play games anyway. You may as well be part of a program where you can earn rewards for it and and the actions you're probably going to do anyway or be persuaded to now do because there's a carrot at the

end of the stick, guiding you through some large reward for doing something a little faster, which ultimately drives to more engagement. since two years ago and there's all this buzz. It feels like to me just anecdotally uh from reporting and talking with people that some of that buzz around rewarded UA has kind of died down and so or at least I'm just hearing less about it. So are you seeing that things have quietened quietened a bit from that kind of what felt like a bit of a boom period for rewards UA and then if so like why do you think that is? Are there too many competitors kind of working in the space at the moment? Like how do you feel about it right now?
Sure. Um I think the boom or the the kind of buzzy time two or three years ago was because of the amount of competitors who watched.
So like you know us at Misplay, we've been doing this since 20 2015. We were the first to do it from an O and O perspective. We built that community. People call us the OG in the space

because we were we were the first to do it. The pioneers are play terms. Some people also say because we've used Playtime for so long. But really what happened was as competition started to really build around 2022 2023 that gave more of a spotlight onto rewarded game publishers were trying different partners trying different things. Now what happened was the quick rise of a lot of those competitors led to the quick fall as well. And now as we enter 2026, it's only a very few established I'll say rewarded partners remaining and a lot of those are the ones that kind of pioneered the way alongside us.
But because of that and because it's more established, I think that's why less people talk about it, right? Like we don't sit here anymore like 2018 2019 and talk about the mediation wars, right? Or oh, it's iron source versus Apple loving who's going to win because it's over. It doesn't mean people don't use App Love and Orion source anymore. Of course they do. Applovin's a major Goliath in our industry. It continues to

crush. But just because we're not talking about it every day doesn't mean it's not relevant.
For me, it means it's established, which is a period I think we're we're kind of entering into. I think it's almost there,
but I think we've kind of taken one step there, which is why the the buzziness around it has kind of has dropped a little bit. Do you think because one of the things I heard was because there was so many players in the space, it was actually hard for any player to kind of gain this maybe critical mass that they needed to be like super attracted to more publishers. Are we seeing that the other side of that now? So now you're able to actually gain quite a lot of traction or more traction.
Yeah, I mean look, we've always been a steady a steady beast. It's kind of just parrying along and our focus has been on ensuring we're driving high performance for our clients who are game publishers and ensuring we're driving a really high quality experience for our users and making sure they're getting the right rewards at the right time and a really personalized experience. And I think because Misplay specifically, we've kind of had our head on our own game and just

focused on that trajectory, that's been what we've done. Uh there's been a tremendous focus on highv valued users. You know, we're not trying to gap every player under the sun who's just going to come in and play a game and then leave after 10 minutes. We want them to come in. We want them to be sticky. We want them to play for a long time. We want them to spend, of course, that's how you drive OS and the big returns for our clients. Uh but ultimately, when you look around at all the noise, it's been noisy. I think that's the word that describes it best. It's been a little noisy. Now, that noise is starting to quiet down a little bit. I think the right players are emerging who are there and those media wallets are starting to be allocated in the right way and growing as I mentioned in the start.
That makes sense. The noise has died down a bit because now we're seeing this as as strategy. I mean, to your point, Craig, I remember some shows where really everyone at some level was doing rewarded just because it was a cool

thing to do and because they knew that it was rising up as a UA channel. Now, as you said, Aaron, it's there. It has arrived. It is established. Now, we're looking at what's next. And that's where I'd like to go with you, Francesca, because you're looking at the product. And, you know, in the beginning, it was a UA lever. Now it's changing as studios evolve. It's becoming something more. We're talking about a monetization lever. What does that look like in practical terms for a game studio?
What that looks like for a game studio is that I mean to be blunt that rewarded is no longer a source of cheap traffic. Um, I think I don't know if it ever was, but I do know that the users that we're bringing in through our rewarded network are um are becoming more and more high quality. That is our intention. That is like the focus of our product is to drive advertiser returns.

And I think that the game publisher that is looking to find new users, acquire new players, be a rewarded via rewarded products um should probably pay attention to that if they're we are acquiring more players ever. We're growing year-over-year. And so I think that's a testament to two things. is one that um the business model works. Uh people are interested in rewarded products and they love earning and playing games and finding games they like to play. Um and two that that does go back to the point that Aaron made that we're that we are more established and perhaps more regular than we were, you know, a couple years ago when we were maybe a little bit more um new. uh and like un maybe tested

to add to add to that as well. Um I love gaming as Peggy mentioned, I've been inry a long time. One thing I've learned is that our fantastic clients will continue to raise the bar. And just to start to show signs of goodness and things look great, that bar will be raised and it will either be performance or scale. And so just as you feel like things are looking good and you're purring along and you're delivering a nice quality amount of installs at the right price, it's delivering a rorowaz, it will be okay, how do we get more, how do we double this, let's keep it going. And that's a testament to the industry in itself that there's many intelligent buyers out there uh who are hungry and who want to hit growth goals and who want to do more with less and ultimately you want to diversify. And so it's really interesting because it forces uh companies like ours to continue to be innovative, always look to what's next, always strive to what we can do that's

bigger and better cuz if if you don't keep up with that, you you'll get squashed essentially. Like it moves very quickly. And I don't think we'll ever hit that that point of perfection because it doesn't exist. It will always be how can I get more players? How can I get them playing longer? And how can I get them spending more? Well, because that's in the nature of play really. I mean, you brought it up yourself. You do things because, you know, I've got my frequent flyer program. I've got my points here and and it's no different in games. But one thing to pick up on that is it's now about monetization very much more than top of funnel. It's it's actually both really. So then the question becomes if it's midfunnel engagement, if it's midfunnel events, deeper engagement, what should we be optimizing to or thinking about or rewarding rather than just what we did at the beginning? Maybe you start Francesca, you know, how that impacts rewarded um and what you offer. Uh and

we'll get to that in a moment, but overall how Miss Play frames this in a rewarded environment. Great question, Peggy. I'll start off by saying time spent is still a leading indicator of a game publisher success and a reward for it because there's a direct correlation between time spent and in-game IP. And so we and so that's why we we do believe in playtime as a mechanism for rewarding our users, our players. However, the goal has always been as you know Aaron said, our advertisers are never satisfied and in the best way. I was in UA as well. I had results that I needed to drive and I was very focused on making them better every month. Um, so for us, what we've learned is it's playtime is great and it works,

but if we reward users with contextual events within the game, and so it could be reach board five or it could be, you know, go, you know, get to Monaco, just very specific to the game itself. And we reward users based on players based on that. Then we see deeper engagement, deeper play time, deeper spend. And so we have fully leaned into that as a business. And so we are not we are no longer just having a one-sizefits-all playtime um rewarding mechanism, which we had historically uh optimized towards the player. Um and the you know but and and now we are focusing on keeping that foundation of our tried andrue play time that we've you know pioneered that we've optimized

um but also adding deeper in-game events that are contextual to where the user is to keep them going within the game so that we can drive deeper monetization, drive deeper retention and we're seeing a lot of success with it. I think Jessica described it very well. And the key really is that every game's different, right? Every game monetizes slightly differently. They monetize at different points in the user journey, right? They have they have more aggressive ways to do it than others in some cases. And so that's why one size fits all will really not work no matter how much it's worked in the past. You have to adapt in order to to keep with the times. And that goes down as far as personalized offers, personalized live ops, not personal personaliz for the user, but also for the game as well. And so now as you're driving towards playtime and these events, you can get a lot more created in terms of what you're asking them to do and for the players,

what reward they're going to get. Because if you're asking them to go pretty deep and get through some big hurdles, which may require spending some money to do so, there should be a bag at the end of it for them. And that's the way this whole designed.
So it sounds like with the the teams that actually kind of work with your platform, you can't just plug into like a like a normal ad solution and run run creatives. You have to like think about it a bit more deeply. So for publishers that are kind of using say a misplay like how should the kind of UAMON and product teams actually think differently?
Yeah. Uh uh for me it's not looking at us like a typical UA source, right? It's not like going to run campaigns through a DSP or a traditional off wall. You're able to get your game in front of a community, right, of of players, high valued users. And so the messaging should be slightly different, which we provide a lot of guidance on. But really

then even after the install once you persuaded them to install the game and they've chosen your game it's that journey we talk about that should be personalized like we like to get clients live ops calendars right we want to understand if they're running a special event right I think we mentioned this Pokemon's 30th anniversary coming up and and we partner with with Pokémon Go and so when they're running a special event on the weekends we will use some of that messaging within Misplay because remember these players are inside Misplay play, checking on their rewards, looking for new games to discover. It's a great opportunity. Yes, they'll see something within the game saying, "Hey, just for this weekend, you know, extra 30% off APS or this exclusive bundle just for you." We can run that same messaging where they miss play, double down essentially. So, they may be looking for a new game to play and all of a sudden they'll see something that says, "Hey, it's this exclusive weekend just for you. Let's go do this." And then we can get them to re-engage once again with the game. And so it's a much more powerful platform than just, hey,

let's plug in, toss some creatives in, and run some UA. Yeah. We want to make it a very personalized experience based on every game and every user that comes in.
When someone installs a game on miss, they get, as Aaron mentioned, live ops messages. They get rewards that are specific to the game, personalized to the game. And so a user uh players both playing the game and encouraged to go deeper into the game is um is rewarded for their achievements and events in the game but they're using misplay to and so misplay is almost like a tracker for them that tracks what they're doing that is and it's also a I think of it as a game as well. So users players playing both misplay and the game itself. Um we work really closely with the game publishers to understand what works for them. What are the events people like? What are the events that are driving the most for you? Uh we learn we re like on

a game level we analyze the data to understand what are the best events achievements where should we rewarding these players? What's going to bring the most? What's going to bring the most performance for these advertisers? And we do that on a game by-game level. Play those games. We have live ops campaigns that will uh communicate to the player as they're playing those games at various points to encourage them to spend to play to do xyz. And so we are really uh ingrained I think with we are very committed to game performance not I think in a way that a typical ad network is because we don't leave the player once they've installed the game. We are still with that throughout their whole journey as and we're optimizing real time as well. So if we see something doesn't work, we change. I like that. Like a living laboratory actually because you're there all the time and see you're learning all

the time.
How scalable are rewarded platforms like misplay for the long term? Like I guess from your perspective. So if the goal is for a publisher to have a you're promoting that you've got these highly engaged players and and so publishers want to target those. So a publisher comes in and then they get one of those players. But if they then act if that player then actually sticks around which is shortly the end goal for the publisher, does that mean you you actually lose that player within your platform or is that not what you see? There's a lot of users out there. I'll start with that, right? We have a tremendous marketing team, shout out to them, who are able to find highquality users in places we've found to be pretty incremental. Uh, obviously I can't share where those places are, but we're consistently testing new channels, new places to find these users to join

Misplay. And then obviously once they join Misplay, the key is to retain them. And part of that absolutely is to make sure we have a big healthy diverse catalog of games so our ML uh and recommener alos can match the users to the right game and then as they're playing those games we absolutely do see users come back and choose another game to install and another game to install. You know, some people have been using display for five, six, seven, eight years, right? Because they enjoy the product and they consistently have a fresh catalog of games that they're able to engage with while consistently earning rewards in the games they decided to play with. Uh, which is which is great to be honest with you. In addition, right, there's two worlds to reward it. There's there's O and O where you have standalone apps or there's the network side, right, where to your point, Greg, it's expensive and it's hard to grow a community
and then drive those users out of your get app to go and play games because

essentially are you losing those users. So you essentially want to double down by saying we try we're going to continue to reward our users. We're going to give them incentives to come back to misplay. We're going to give them incentives to keep playing the games. That's all good. But you also essentially need this secondary source where you can acquire users as well and maybe show the games in a different format. And that's why we introduced loyalty player last year where now it's not just misplay on Android, miss on iOS, it's also the games being able to access external supply through our integrations, through our loyalty play technology where we're putting that tech into non-gaming apps and allowing them to advertise by playing our games. So, it's a two-sided strategy and and again, you guys probably saw the recent agreement we've made to acquire connected rewards from mobility, which gives us access to massive incremental supply because that's how we yes, we want to grow our business, but we want to cater and serve our clients as well in the best way we

possibly can. And that ultimately is yes, we want to drive super high value, high quality users through Misplay O and O, but also find these incremental audience through these unique placements within these these extra avenues of supply as well. So it's a bit it's kind of twofold and you can blend together, do some interesting thing with budget allocations, give advertisers different options, tie in live ops there. There's a bunch you can do which is super excited to get to as we kind of get through this year as well. We had trans media and non-gaming at PGC London and that's just it. You know, this is going to be rewarded in non-gaming apps and that's what this acquisition plays into exactly that trend. If we look at not just what you've been doing through your acquisition, what you're learning in answer to Craig's question, but also just overall what does rewarded need to look like if we want to match that

interest in performance, the interest in monetization, then you know the model has to change a little bit. What's exciting is you haven't just thought about it. You've actually been looking at your tests and testing things in live ops as you said, Franchesca, learning from what goes on and that goes back into the product. And in prep, we were talking about things that you've seen, for example, you know, a 50% year-over-year increase in live op spend. That's that's that's massive. Um, a 9% lift in day seven spend. So these are the internal testing and the internal experimentation. How does that sort of show up in what Miss Play offers? Maybe you can start with one of your tests, Francesca.
Sure. A small correction in that the amount of day seven spend we were able to increase was significantly more than 9%. And I'll
I'll tell you how um and this is

our new kind of feature that we're launching for advertisers.
Oh, all right.
And so rewarded, it should come to no surprise, but the types of rewards, when we place those rewards, how much we reward is actually really important to the way it to uh game performance. Um and so we have an established playtime what we call an economy rewarding mechanism that you know when we when midfight first started kind of pioneered and then there's a new kind of um what we were wondering I'll take a step back what we were wondering is what else can what else will drive deeper engagement and deeper performance within the games And so through our live ops campaigns, we learned that if we tell people what

to do,
then they
um and it's kind of like the following bouncing ball principle that's really common in advertising like you people just need to know what to do. And I think it's the same for reward for rewarded players. They uh we don't want like it shouldn't be complicated. it needs to be really simple. Um, and I think playtime is somewhat a little bit complicated. Um, but we've simplified it and that's why it works for us. And we've learned recently that um, in-game tasks are also something that improve game performance. And so we started off really simple with using kind of playtime tasks or spend tasks or really kind of like non-game specific tasks and we saw an improvement in retention spend and rorowaz for advertisers. Um and so that's what brought us to events. And so

we thought to ourselves, okay, so we see this, we know that if we tell people specifically what to do, um, that they'll do it. And what happens if we tell them what to do, that's like more relevant to what they're doing in the game? As I explained earlier, I see misplay as a supplement to their gaming,
not as a kind of handoff. And so um and then so that's what we are launching in uh about a month or so is a feature called events. And what that does is it combines play time as a rewarding mechanism and then also adds in-game contextual achievement events to drive deeper game performance. And what's interesting about it in the way that we're approaching it is it is very personal to the game. And so all of the events that we are showing to the the players are

game specific. Um and they're also based on data. They're based on what the game that what we know works for the game and based on the data that we see and also based on what the advertiser has told us. And so we believe that this combined playtime events we call economy but rewarding mechanism is going to just really uh drive a longer term kind of retention and performance and deeper monetization for those games. And so super bullish that we're the only network thing that does both. I don't I think we're one of the few that does Playtime. um we really mastered it in terms of machine learning. Um but we're excited to this with this hybrid approach because we know we can make play time work and we know that events are standard for many reward networks. But this combo I think is going to be fantastic for advertisers.

So So what do those I'm just curious because we know about events but you're saying you know people will do what you what you tell them what you lay out for them. you know this task or this or this uh this action if you lay it out they'll get it. It's also a value exchange they have to understand it. Um obviously you're getting ready and gearing up to launch this. So we can't talk about it in great depth. You know what does it look like or what are these events? But you were testing you were testing this. Is there something interesting or innovative in what that looks like in practice? you know, the types of events, how you tell them what to do, how you make them personal because we have our live ops, but as you said, this is playtime events is that plus the context of the game.
Yeah, great question. So, I see misplay as a game itself. And the way to win misplay is to achieve certain rewards

um in games. And it works best when we have great games, um, which we do that users love to play. And then it also works even better when we have the right earnings and reward mechanisms for those players. And so we gify kind of rewarding um through playtime events. So we have like keystone events or boosted events that we want people to reach just like they would in a game. We lock those events. We use a lot of the principle of principle. We use a lot of the same principles that game publishers use to engage, retain, and keep players kind of in the game. And we we have we're utilizing that with our events feature. Um, and so I think that's kind of I, you know, I know you guys maybe like see us as an as a network. I see us as a game. I see us as like a type of game, right?

Um and so uh I would say that that's what we've learned so far. I mean I have a background in UA as we've established
telling to do in a very clear way um by giving them the uh value
uh like righting the value um has is a tried and trueue kind of way of advertising to people. And so we've applied a lot of those principles as well in our copy, in our design, in our experience.
So, as I mentioned before, you know, you've done several tests, right? You've also tested playtime plus task mechanics, which is kind of interesting. You know, we're talking about always telling the player what to do. So, introducing taskbased incentives, that's pretty interesting. alongside of time. What What performance did you see? What numbers? What do you have to share from that? Because that's that's a pretty wild experiment actually. Franchesca,

we saw a 30% lift in playtime with that experiment. We released it and 30% increase D30 rorowass. And so um and that's what gives us the conviction that moving towards events that are not just like superficial like long-term events D45 D90 are going to improve those metrics even more. the world is confusing enough like are we aim to our product is a really easy light product. Um we're they're just playing games and they're able you know and they're earning and they're having fun. And so the way that we approach like communicating to them, the way that like the playtime events feature is going to be when it launches and the way that the hybrid playtime task feature

that we have out right now is is just
making it like fun for them. um light, easy to understand so that they keep you know within misplay and using as I said misplay to supplement something that they're already doing which is gaming.
So the task is again it's related to the game. So, you've got that personalization element that you had before from the context and now we've got a task that fits that that fits that game mechanic. And all of this comes together because you hinted at it, Francesca. You know, you have a product coming out, a pretty significant announcement that sort of brings this all together because you're not just fine-tuning what rewards are about, you're actually, you know, reconstructing them based on these tests. The philosophy that we've established and are continuing to kind of hypothesize and develop and nurture

is around how we reward in general. What do we reward? What different types of rewards we can offer and how do those rewards um motivate our players and how do they result in deeper monetization? rewarding mechanism impacts our um advertiser performance and rewards are costly because we're giving players something for the their behavior. And so the science is in really experimenting and finding the right reward, right action, right thing to reward so that we are driving that deeper engagement. are driving that monetization for our advertisers
while balancing kind of player needs and
so I would say it's something that makes sense economically is what you're saying you know you can't have too much for for too little or the or the other way

around and just curious in playtime events which is what you're launching um anything interesting amazing cool you found out about the rewards or the mechanisms or that match because you almost want to say okay you might not tell us now because you're about to launch but you know which rewards work which ones don't what what came up here differently in how you're approaching this cuz again you found out some gems because you have the results I mean 30% and and uh and 50% these aren't small increases so you're on to something what can you share
we're on to something. And to to your point, you know, there's only a certain amount we can share.
True.
But what what the sauce that's cooking right now that's coming to a nice boil, which is all very strongly about through initial testing.
Mhm.

Is also from direct feedback from the game publishers and the players. And I think that's what makes this one special. There's a there's a synergy. There's a dance happening between what we're designing and what we're building that's been inputed directly from both of those sets. And that's really what where the magic comes, right? If you can create something where it's driving a ton of extra value for our clients while creating a much more richer experience for the players, then it works. And then you can simply optimize and personalize that through RML models. And again through those recommendations, not only for recommendations of which games to play, but also saying, okay,
there's players on an absolute charge in this game that start dropping larger awards to keep them going
and specific to that game. I think that's very exciting versus just play longer, right? It's a little bit of it's a little played out like keep playing.

Okay, for how long? Where do I need to get to? When do I stop? What do I get? Now it's like here it is and it's going to continue to evolve in real time as they play the game. The idea of like the companion I think is really interesting. Like we're a companion alongside you as you're playing the game. Making sure you know what you're doing. You know where the right opportunities are and you know what your your your rewards that you're getting as well which I think is pretty interesting take. So that's why playtime events which as you mentioned we're launching a lot of our partners already know about this. They've been they've been building this with us during events getting ready for it. So, this certainly won't be a a soft launch. It will be a pretty big aggressive launch uh as we enter April here.
There's companies coming up in the rewarded play space as well as the rewarded UA space. But it sounds like this is kind of what you're doing, right? So, you it's like really don't know what to talk about, but this is why you're the experts. So, I guess like we have you have the rewarded UA side. So the player comes in and then now you're getting the rewarded play side which is like the other

monetization side of the of things. So you're now kind of covering the whole the whole lot right is is essentially what you're saying because I've seen some startups coming up in the rewarded play space.
Yeah. We've always driven monetization for our clients as users have played the game. Now we're doubling down on that
and we're giving more rewards. We're making it more personalized for each game so that that whole experience is just a lot more seamless and enjoyable quite frankly. Like if you're playing a game like I I I use Misplay. We encourage everyone to use Misplay. I hope you guys try Mr. After 2 and buy the game you like and play. And I think it'll give you the full experience understanding of like, okay, as I'm playing this game, this just feels it feels good to a be rewarded, but b really understand where my rewards coming from, what I need to do, and how far I can potentially go and the potential of what's what's in it for me if I continue

to play this game for 30, 60, 90 days, maybe even longer. Um, and obviously we have a big catalog. Huge credit to the games who have built tremendous monetization engines and live ops teams and and their segmentation is phenomenal in terms of understanding when to put messaging in the right uses. It's not just us doing it. It's a complete collaboration. We're just trying to complement what they're already doing by giving them another arena that the users can can play in as well. So when you talk about cycles like that, it makes me think, okay, then this is going to be something it's relevant to all genres, but it's going to be specifically relevant to strategy, right? or RPG because that's where you get into the 60 the 90 days the the beyond where you're thinking loop you know and what Craig was talking about you know it's going to go on for much longer perhaps than what we've seen in rewarded play before
when you look at the makeup of the

catalog it it's certainly dominated by more puzzle casino match that kind of vibe or the casual side of it but as we as we've sniffed these pockets of success with with certain RPG and strategy titles, it's actually yet another reason we decided to double down and go in this direction because the feedback from them was this is working, but how do we get them deeper? How do we get them more engaged? How do we get them faster? And a lot of that feedback came from large RPG strategy titles who tested us, and we weren't able to drive that engagement with playtime only. And so they said, "Hey, if you can design something like this, we think it's going to work." And it's yet another reason to double down on the competence of this thing that it's going to open up a new genre of games for our players to play. And that could obviously open up incremental audiences that that come to Misplay, which is exciting for us,
but it does create a more of a holistic ecosystem for all kinds of games, not

just casual players who want to play the puzzle games,
right? And I think these mechanisms again to your point Peggy, like those are the games where the stories are deep and complex and the characters grow the further you play and you get more and more hooked the deeper you get. So that's where we're partnering with with certain large RPG games to really understand how deep, how far do we have to go, do we offer a different kind of reward for these specific users. It's been really fascinating to go through
and and that's where again I think you know if we did this podcast in a year
for an update I think you'd see a very different dynamic in terms of the amount of players playing and the games they're playing as well.
Well because you're going beyond time spent. Time spent is sort of generic. I mean that can be anything. But if you're going to get intertwined with the mechanics of the game, the psychology or the player type, right, you can start really getting to the point where maybe at some point, I don't know, Craig, we all see a different reward based on what

we've been doing because that's how to make it relevant. It doesn't become something super generic because why would that really work going forward? We have everything now that's somehow related to context or how we play, right?
That's exact. That's exactly right. And all of the data is obviously being fed into our ML models. We're a phenomenal data science team. Um, and again, like you can see the magic brewing really nicely. And again, once we actually launch and this kind of exponentially grows, it's only going to get better and better. The performance will only improve.
It's all about motivation. Exciting. Just to add to the RPG strategy comment, I would say that RPG strategy games are really what inspired daytime events and us kind of forging the way there. We did a lot of research, player research, game research, market research on RPG strategy games.

Um, and and I think you mentioned it, Peggy, like it's a very personal experience. it's uh very specific to the you're telling stories and you generic kind of rewards don't work as well. But if you join your guild and do this or you get to this kind of level or if you un unlock that like that's a you know dopamine hit to the player in the game but then they get rewarded for it in misplay. It's like a it's, you know, win-win um
game player and um misplay. And so we're that's what kind of led us to we really do need to make it more personal based on the game. Um so that these RPG strategy gamers can really do see misplay as something that will supplement their gameplay because they're not as interested in kind of more just earning for earning sake. they're really invested in what they're playing.

Um, and we wanted to honor that with this.
So, Craig, I guess what we're seeing here is we're just basically seeing sort of rewarded grow up and become as as Franchesca said, you know, it is part of the game. It is it is now in the fabric of the game. It's not just something about time spent.
Yeah. It's been really interesting hearing you both talk about it and I guess we'll see as always with these things like over the next couple years like how publishers are using that versus kind of other use UI channels.
Great way to get a segue into exactly one of the final questions as we wrap up which is exactly that. Here we are heading into 2026 going off to GDC. You're going off to your launch of Playtime Rewards. Um I'll start with you Aaron. How do you see rewarded continuing to evolve now that we've established it? It's about monetization. That monetization is going to deepen. These habits are going to shift. Where's it going?

I think it's going to continue on the same tra trajectory that's on which is growing more market share growing more share of wallet becoming more and more personalized and I think that ultimately leads going through the cycles of adtech in mobile gaming to probably more consolidation down the line. Craig was mentioning the cycles of rewarded it's kind of hot and then it's not. It's it's been on this nice upward trajectory for a while and I used to describe it as as like fashion, you know, it begins in in style and then it's out of style and it's in style. It's been in style for a long time. This is definitely the longest run probably now five to six years where it's been it's been hot
and it continues to grow and yes, it has its peaks and troughs, but the overall trend lines are heading up to the right and I certainly think it's going to continue in that direction. I'm very confident to say that as well. Francesca,
I agree with everything Aaron has said. I would add that I think we'll continue to see maybe some

more personalization rewarded. Uh, you know, on our end, we're investing a lot in machine learning and our algos to really make sure that we're matching the players the right games with the right rewards. for us really kind of deepening our invest into machine learning um into our algorithms to support a reward econommies to support our recommendations to support game performance I think is is one of our main priorities and I think that'll take us through the next couple of years. I'd imagine that that would be the same for most reward networks.
I hope you share some of that going forward. I mean, I've read multiple misplay reports. So, when I think about, okay, how are we going to get the rewards right? So, it's a level of context, but also the content is fascinating. Now, how do you give people something they value while still making

certain advertisers are getting value? Craig, do you want to bring us out with our questions that are standard for every show for I don't know, I've been doing this for three years, so probably for longer than that. Uh, so we have two questions. I guess I'll ask them at the same time, but for both of you is finally, right? Like, what is your favorite game that you're currently playing if you're playing a game? And what is your favorite game of all time?
Okay, ladies first, Riches.
Oh my god.
Unless Unless thinking time, but I can
travel. My favorite is Travel Town. Like, you know that? Yeah, it
I when I can't sleep at night, I just like play that game and it like I don't know, it just shuts off my brain and it's like super I don't know, fun to play. Time goes by and I I really enjoy it. It really relaxes me. Um, and so

that's my favorite game to play. Aaron, you're up now.
Yes. Favorite game of all time. It's funny. Craig Craig and I only met today, but we realized we're from the same town in England and that's called Hodon and uh probably grew up slightly similar terms. I'm probably a little older than you, but uh being English, having lived in the States now for 15 years. Favorite game of all time has to be FIFA because I don't think you can be from England and the suburbs of London without saying that. So, haven't played in a long time. Uh uh you you uh gave me some nostalgia of Craig joining the school realizing you were from Hod as well and it just took me back to sitting in my mom and dad's house in front of the TV for hours just playing feature on the Xbox 360 which is great. Uh favorite game right now or like Clash Royale uh on a strategy theme. We worked with Super for a long time. They're great partners and I am so entrenched in Clash Royale. So if anyone wants to game, let me know. I'm I'm getting better. Getting better, but it's it's a great one. The mechanics

of phenomenal.
Nice. Yeah, they had a big resurgence.
Well, it has been great to have this deep dive into where rewarded is going. The evolution is exciting. Your announcement is exciting. As I said, lift the lid on what works and rewarded and that will just blow us away. So, thanks again, Erin, Franchesca. Great to have you. Craig, fantastic to have you as a co-host as always. Um, we will look for that at GDC. We're gonna be there, Craig. Gonna be there all day long.
Gonna be there all week.
Or we Exactly. Me, too. Actually, we're meeting for a couple podcasts during the show. So, if anyone hears this, you know, wants to stop by, finds us. We've got a suite. We're ready to rock. This show is all about how to do your job better, how to make an amazing game, how to market it, and you have a say. So, if you have a story or know someone we need to shine a light on, then we would love to hear from you.
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