two & a half gamers 📈🤌 Why studios now spend 40% on Rewarded UA?
Rewarded user acquisition and offer walls are suddenly becoming a major part of mobile game UA strategy.
In this episode of Two and a Half Gamers, Matej and Felix talk with Max from MAF about how rewarded UA evolved from a questionable growth hack into a legitimate acquisition channel.
Studios are now allocating 30–40% of their UA budgets to rewarded channels, and some games are scaling them even more aggressively.
The conversation covers ROI timelines, retention dynamics, monetization setups, genre fit, and how rewarded playtime models are changing the economics of offer walls.
If you’re running UA in 2026, ignoring rewarded UA might be a very expensive mistake.
🧠 Key Takeaways
• Rewarded UA budgets now reach 30–40% of total spend
• Playtime rewards outperform install rewards
• Rewarded channels can reach break-even 2–3x faster than traditional UA
• Strategy, merge and social casino games scale best
• Offer walls can add 5–15% monetization uplift inside games
• Playtime rewards help build player habits over 60–90 days
• Offer walls are shifting from monetization tools to loyalty and engagement systems
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This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.
Panelists: Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric
Special guest: Massimo Caroli
https://www.linkedin.com/in/massimocaroli/
https://maf.ad/
Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-2um8eguhf-c~H9idcxM271mnPzdWbipg
Chapters
00:00 Rewarded UA Strategy Question
01:18 Podcast Intro
01:50 Max From MAF Introduction
03:20 What Rewarded UA Actually Is
04:00 Why Studios Are Investing In It
05:20 Privacy Changes And UA Diversification
06:40 Economic Trends In Rewarded Apps
07:46 Why Offer Walls Had A Bad Reputation
09:05 The Shift To Playtime Rewards
10:00 Monetization And Game Economy Challenges
11:00 Airline Loyalty Case Study
13:00 Rewarded Playtime On iOS
15:00 Why Playtime Rewards Work Better
16:00 ROI Comparison vs Traditional UA
18:00 Building Player Habits
19:30 Monetization Setup For Rewarded UA
21:00 Best Genres For Offer Walls
23:00 Games That Should Avoid Offer Walls
24:30 Offer Wall Monetization Benchmarks
26:00 When Studios Should Implement Offer Walls
28:00 Case Study: TapNation ROI Results
30:00 How To Launch Rewarded UA
32:00 Scaling Across Multiple Offer Wall Networks
34:00 LiveOps Events & Super Bowl Tournament
36:30 Future Of Offer Walls & Loyalty Systems
39:30 DSPs And Offer Wall Aggregation
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Matej Lancaric
User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant
https://lancaric.me
Felix Braberg
Ad monetization consultant
https://www.felixbraberg.com
Jakub Remiar
Game design consultant
https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar
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