Monetizing an app can be challenging. Particularly in the wake of GDPR and concerns
about users’ data privacy, traditional avenues of monetization like ads are
becoming less profitable. While the ad industry is busy grappling with fines for GDPR violations, publishers are having to look for other means of monetizing their non-paying users.
As an app publisher, you’re likely already aware of just how few of your users actually pull out their credit card and make a purchase in-app. In fact, industry statistics show that as few as 5% of app users are willing to make in-app purchases. If your monetization strategy revolves around 1 in 20 of your users, you have to ask yourself: what if you could effectively monetize the other 19?
Of course, this is easier said than done. Given the ongoing Apple crackdown on offerwalls, publishers need to get creative when it comes to monetizing their non-paying users. Fortunately, there’s a solution: rewarded surveys.
What Are Rewarded Surveys?
Rewarded surveys are just that: in-app surveys which reward users in exchange for answering a few questions. Here at TheoremReach, we connect market researchers with a publisher's audience. The easy integration presents users with surveys to take in exchange for a reward - typically the publisher's premium content or currency in real time.. Meanwhile, the market researcher gets the data they need and the publisher receives a payment in exchange.
These types of surveys are becoming increasingly common in gaming apps, contributing significantly to these apps’ profitability.
Compared to traditional approaches to monetization, however, rewarded surveys
are still relatively new on the scene -- and non-gaming apps stand to benefit from incorporating them into their user experience.
There are two categories of non-gaming apps in particular that can benefit from the introduction of reward surveys: apps with premium content, and apps with premium features.
Apps with Premium Content
If your app offers premium content, rewarded surveys are an excellent way to offer this content to your non-paying users. News aggregators in particular are in a great position to incorporate rewarded surveys into their monetization strategy. Have you ever tried to open a New York Times article only to be blocked by the paywall? Or have you run a Google search and landed on a TechCrunch or Wall Street Journal article, only to find your access limited to the first paragraph? Imagine giving users an opportunity to answer a few quick questions in exchange for reading the article they’re interested in. The potential revenue growth is enormous for these types of publishers.
Apps with Premium Features
What about apps that offer premium features rather than premium content? Like apps with premium content, these types of apps fall into the freemium category: they’re free to use with limited functionality, prompting users to pay for access to the full feature set. Freemium apps account for about 98% of App Store revenue -- but recall that only 5% of their users are willing to pay for premium features. What about the other 95%?
With rewarded surveys, popular dating apps like Tinder and OkCupid could give their non-paying users access to a limited set of premium features.
There’d still be good reason for that 5% user base to pay for full access --
but for someone who’s just trying out the app and wants access to a single
premium feature, rewarded surveys could capture a significant amount of
additional revenue.
Rewarded Surveys Increase User Retention and Engagement
A lot of publishers are concerned about user experience, as they ought to be. After all, dissatisfied users won’t stick around for long -- and without a user base, you might as well throw in the towel as a publisher.
One thing we hear from publishers on a regular basis is: “What about user retention and engagement? Won’t rewarded surveys disrupt user experience and reduce retention?”
We understand where these concerns come from, but the reality is actually the other way around. Rewarded surveys increase user retention and engagement, as demonstrated by a recent case study we conducted. According to this study, rewarded surveys led to the following results amongst survey participants:
600% increase in user retention 3x higher in-app purchase conversion rate 3,000% increase in user lifetime value
As you can see, users who participate in surveys are much more engaged and highly likely to continue as users. What other monetization strategies manage to provide publishers with more revenue, better retention, and improved user experience all rolled into one?
TheoremReach: Rewarded Surveys Made Easy
Here at TheoremReach, we make it easy for app publishers to offer rewarded surveys in-app. Our clients report 10-20x the revenue of other survey platforms, and we’re proud to be a market leader in the rewarded survey space.
