Rewarded advertisements aren’t just for gaming and music—the same concept of interacting with an ad in exchange for rewards has come to Line’s free messenger app and is now available to more than 220 million active users. Line offers free one-to-one and group messaging, voice and video calls. Line users are now able to earn “Line Points” for free by engaging with advertisements, serviced by Tapjoy. These points can be traded for premium in-app stickers, themes and other types of content on the Line messenger app to enhance the messaging experience.
Tapjoy ads employ an interactive, gamified element in which users swipe the screen to brush teeth, paint nails or drive a car, just to name a few. Tapjoy offers thousands of opt-in, rewarded ads from hundreds of big brands and trusted partners such as Lego, Starbucks, Clorox and Google. With this new partnership, Tapjoy ads will be visible in more than 200 countries and also reflects a change in how advertising is used.
“This partnership signifies the continuing shift away from traditional, interruptive advertising and towards rewarded advertising as the preferred method for the entire ecosystem,” Shannon Jessup, chief revenue officer of Tapjoy, told [a]listdaily. “It provides yet further evidence that rewarded ads aren’t just for gaming apps, and that publishers in any category can benefit from an ad model that delivers value for users and advertisers alike.”
A major problem for advertisers, especially on mobile, is a rise in ad blockers. When a user actively seeks out an ad for the purpose of gaining rewards, ad blockers are no longer a problem.
“Video ads have performed exceptionally well on our platform,” Jessup said, “and we foresee them working just as well in a messenger environment. Videos provide a great user experience because they’re simple to engage with and they provide strong entertainment value. Those same characteristics carry over into any app type. We also expect rich media ads to do well, and we look forward to seeing how emerging ad formats like playables and even 360-degree ads perform.”
One ad format that may emerge in the near future is engaging directly with a brand via chat bot.
“We are always trying to stay one step ahead of the curve when it comes to facilitating new ad formats and new types of engagement,” Jessup explained. “We’re also always seeking ways that brands can create unique campaigns based on the context created by our publishing partners. Our platform is flexible enough that advertisers are really only constrained by their own creativity, so we’d love to see advertisers come up with a chat bot-based engagement campaign. It would certainly make perfect sense given the Line integration.”
“While this marks the first time that our ads will run in a mainstream messaging app, we have total confidence that the ads will perform very well. Line has proven itself to be one of the stickiest and most engaging app experiences in the world, so Line users will surely engage with rewarded ads in order to earn Line Points.”
