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PocketGamer.biz10 May 2016

Rewarded video ads in Angry Birds 2

Key insights

6 takeaways

01
Angry Birds 2 integrates its own brand assets, such as movie trailers, into the rewarded video ecosystem to drive interest in broader company properties.
02
Rewarded video ads monetize the 95% to 97% of players who do not engage in direct in-app purchases.
03
Rewarded videos provide high-quality engagement for advertisers because users actively choose to watch content in exchange for a tangible gameplay benefit.
04
This strategy serves as a non-intrusive monetization bridge that aligns player incentives with developer revenue goals.
05
The model functions by offering players a choice between spending hard currency or watching a promotional video to bypass level failure.
06
Developers maintain game economy integrity by implementing scarcity, limiting the number of times a player can use video rewards before requiring hard currency or accepting failure.

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Transcript

hello so i've been playing angry birds too but we've come to a a sorry situation in the game where i was so close but i didn't quite finish the level and my red bird there is looking very sad and it says as these things going free to play games i can play on and i can use 60 gems so i do actually do have 164 gems so i could use you know over a third of my gems that i've been carefully hoarding to get a free bird or what's this oh i could watch a free free video to get a free clearly i'm in this in the game state i'm in a sad situation i didn't quite kind of complete the level as i would have hoped um but free videos that sounds like salvation so there we go in fact the uh the video i'm gonna watch here happens to be served up is for the angry

birds movie so that's a um quite holistic isn't it though that rovio uh um not not trying to show me into another game or get me to play uh mobile strike which seems to be the uh the game you get a lot of evidence for but actually you want me to go and see the angry birds movie which comes out in a few days time which i probably would like to see anyway because it looks like gonna be lots of fun anyway so i saw the um saw the advert for that and that was jolly good um but now what happens look there we go i've got another another bird left so very simple this is why um what they call rewarded video advertising is just so popular the the developer the the developer kind of gets really good um kind of what they call click through so people in there in a bad situation they failed the level um they don't want to spend any hard currency and just go i'll watch a video um and then i just get another chance to complete that bit of the game which i failed the advertisers love it because people

are consuming this stuff in in vast quantities and the most important thing the thing that's really driving this whole kind of cycle is that players love it because players are uh basically getting something additional that they can understand has value attached to it because i i would have had to have replayed this level so that's on some basis like i have to kind of use up some extra time and no one has a vast amount of time these days are they um legally watching that video was kind of cool maybe i hadn't seen that trailer before so it makes me excited about the angry birds movie um and equally now i can go and play the game i'll probably not be very good at this but there we go let's did i get them all well um okay okay watch another movie but you can just see how this is why rewarded videos have been so so popular and have pretty much driven uh indirect monetization so the monetization where you know actually people aren't actually spending money in

games as everyone knows that's a very small percentage of players maybe three percent maybe five percent actually spend money in the games um and as you can see because i'm a hopeless player of angry birds um i failed to to complete that and now i don't get another chance to to watch your videos and it's not a it's not a never-ending source i have to understand there's some scarcity to it is a valuable thing for me to be able to watch a video and get another chance and now if i want to continue on i'll have to actually spend some currency so um yeah so that's just a quick look at rewarded videos in angry birds

Summary

Rewarded video advertising serves as a critical monetization strategy in free-to-play mobile gaming, specifically within titles like Angry Birds 2. By offering players a choice between spending hard currency or watching a short promotional video to overcome a failed level, developers create a mutually beneficial ecosystem. This model addresses the reality that only a small fraction of the player base, typically between three and five percent, engages in direct in-app purchases. Rewarded videos effectively capture value from the remaining majority by converting their time and attention into engagement.

The effectiveness of this approach relies on the perceived value of the reward, which allows players to bypass frustration and continue gameplay without depleting their accumulated resources. Advertisers benefit from high consumption rates and high-quality click-through engagement, as users are actively choosing to watch content in exchange for a tangible benefit. In the case of Angry Birds 2, the integration is particularly holistic, as the game utilizes its own promotional material—such as trailers for the Angry Birds movie—to drive interest in broader brand assets while simultaneously facilitating game progression.

To maintain the integrity of the game economy, developers implement scarcity, limiting the number of times a player can utilize video rewards. Once these opportunities are exhausted, players must either accept the failure or resort to spending hard currency. This balance ensures that rewarded videos act as a bridge for casual players rather than a complete replacement for traditional monetization. Ultimately, the popularity of this format stems from its ability to align player incentives with developer revenue goals, providing a non-intrusive method to sustain free-to-play titles.