Rewarded, interstitial or banner: which ad format earns most?
Rewarded video pays the most per view. Banners get seen the most. What actually matters is the two multiplied together.
Rewarded video earns the most per impression. That part isn't really up for debate. In the Tenjin × CAS dataset for Q2 2024, US game apps saw rewarded eCPMs of about $24 on iOS and $30 on Android, against roughly $1 for banners (compiled by Playio).
But most apps that ask "which format earns most?" really mean "which format should I use?", and those are different questions. Revenue is price times volume:
So take a user who watches one rewarded video a day at a $20 eCPM. That's $0.02. Ten banner refreshes at $1 is $0.01. The rewarded ad wins, but not by the 20× the eCPMs suggest. If the same user is happy to sit on a reading screen for twenty minutes, the banner can catch up.
Rewarded video
The user chooses to watch a 15 to 30 second video and gets something back: a life, coins, a hint, an hour of a premium feature. Because they opted in, they actually watch, and advertisers pay for that attention.
The catch is that you need something worth giving. A puzzle game has hints. A to-do app mostly doesn't. If you have to invent a reward, the placement usually doesn't get many views.
Interstitials
These are the full-screen ads between levels or after finishing a task. Nobody asks for them, but they're easy to place and they pay well. In the same Tenjin × CAS data, US interstitials sat around $16 (Android) to $23 (iOS). Appodeal's Q4 2024 North America figures were closer to $10.
Those two sources disagree by a factor of two, which tells you how much benchmarks depend on whose apps are in the sample. Use them to check you're in the right range, not as a target.
The real risk with interstitials is frequency. Show them too often and people leave, and a user who leaves stops earning you anything. Put a minimum gap between them and skip them in the first session.
Banners
A strip at the top or bottom of the screen that refreshes every so often. Low eCPM, lots of impressions, and most users stop noticing them. They work best on screens where people stay a long time (readers, calculators, scanners) and badly on fast gameplay screens where nobody looks at them.
Keep them away from buttons. Accidental clicks get flagged and they annoy everyone.
Side by side
| Format | US eCPM, iOS | US eCPM, Android | How many per user |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rewarded video | $24.39 | $30.25 | As many as you have rewards for |
| Interstitial | $23.17 | $16.15 | Limited by how often you can interrupt |
| Banner | $0.99 | $1.18 | Refreshes while the screen is open |
eCPMs: Tenjin × CAS, Q2 2024, game apps excluding kids apps, via Playio.
So which should you use?
Usually all three, in different places. Rewarded where a reward makes sense, interstitials at real breaks with a cap, banners on screens people stay on.
Then judge the mix by revenue per daily user (ARPDAU), not by eCPM. A change that raises eCPM but costs you impressions or users is a step backwards, and ARPDAU is the number that shows it. There's more on that in our guide to the metrics.