How Offerwall Payouts Are Calculated: Advertiser to User

How are offerwall payouts calculated?

An offerwall payout starts with the advertiser, who agrees to pay a fixed amount for each confirmed conversion, such as an install, a sign-up or a game level. The network that runs the wall keeps a share for sourcing, tracking and fraud checks, and the rest is the publisher’s payout in US dollars. The publisher then turns that payout into its own currency: payout × exchange rate × the share passed to users, plus any bonus, rounded. That final number is the reward the user sees next to the offer.

Each link in that chain is set by a different party, which is why the same offer can show 2,912 coins on one wall, 219 gems on another, and nothing at all in a third country.

The four amounts in every offerwall reward

Every completed offer produces four numbers. Only some of them are visible to each party.

The advertiser starts the chain. It decides what a conversion is worth from what a new user brings in, usually with a target return on ad spend. A game that expects a player who reaches level 20 to spend enough over six months can afford a high payout for that milestone, while a free app with low ad revenue per user cannot. Many offers are priced the CPA way, a fixed amount per result; some pay a share of what the user spends. CPA vs revenue share compares the two models, and how to set a CPA payout for an offerwall campaign shows the advertiser’s side of the math.

The publisher, the website, app, game or community that shows the wall, sees its own payout, not the advertiser’s price. The user sees only the reward.

What the network share pays for

Between the advertiser and the publisher sits the network. Its share is not a fixed industry number: it varies by network and by offer. What it has to cover is much the same everywhere:

• Sourcing and approving offers: finding advertisers, agreeing payouts and countries, and checking that each offer is legal and clearly described.
• Tracking: click IDs, server-to-server postbacks from the advertiser, and postbacks to every publisher.
• Fraud and quality checks: blocking VPNs, bots and duplicate accounts before the advertiser sees them, because bad traffic leads to reversals and lost advertisers.
• Billing advertisers: invoicing, collecting payment, and settling disagreements about which conversions were valid.

For a publisher, the practical point is simple: the payout you receive is the number to plan with. Compare networks on what they actually pay you per click or per active user, not on a split you cannot verify. eCPM and EPC explained shows how to measure that, and what is a CPA network? covers the network’s role in more detail.

The reward formula: exchange rate, user split and rounding

Once the publisher payout is known, the user’s reward is pure arithmetic. On Sharklio, the Rewards and currency docs give it exactly:

reward = payout × conversion rate × split to user / 100 × (1 + bonus / 100)
then rounded with your rounding rule

Each app has its own settings for this, on the Currency tab of the dashboard:

• Payout: what you earn for the step, in US dollars. It is the same value as {payout} in postbacks.
• Conversion rate: how many units of your currency equal $1 of your earnings, before the split, for example 1,000.
• Split to user: the share of your earnings your users receive as currency, a whole number from 1 to 100. Your earnings stay in US dollars whatever split you choose.
• Bonus: a temporary percentage on top of every reward, 0 when no bonus runs.
• Reward rounding: whole numbers, or up to 3 decimals.

The rate decides how big the numbers look; the split decides how much of your earnings you hand out. How to set your virtual currency exchange rate helps you choose both.

How rounding works

Whole-number rounding turns 16.65 into 17, and halves round up, so 2.5 becomes 3. Three-decimal rounding turns 0.0084 into 0.008. Two side effects matter:

• An offer whose reward would be 0 after rounding is not shown. With a low rate and whole numbers, small offers drop out of your wall.
• Every step of an offer is rounded on its own, and the offer’s total is the sum of the rounded steps. That total can differ slightly from rounding the whole payout at once.

Worked example: one offer from advertiser to user

A strategy game runs a three-step offer for new players on Android in the United States. The table follows each step through the chain.

Now three publishers show the same offer with different currency settings, and no bonus running:

Three things stand out:

• The publisher payout is identical. Each publisher earns $3.64 for a full completion.
• Rounding per step adds up. Publisher B’s total is 219, while $3.64 × 100 × 60% = 218.4 would round to 218. Each step rounded up a little.
• The split is the publisher’s margin. If Publisher A’s coins cash out at 1,000 per $1, users receive $2.912 of value and A has $0.728 left per full completion to cover reversals, payment fees, servers and support.

From one completion to earnings per click

Most users do not finish every step. Suppose 200 users on Publisher A’s wall click this offer: 90 finish the tutorial, 30 reach castle level 10, and 6 make a purchase. Publisher A earns 90 × $0.26 + 30 × $0.78 + 6 × $2.60 = $62.40, an EPC of $0.312 per click, and credits 49,920 coins, which is 80% of $62.40 at 1,000 coins per $1. The virtual currency calculator lets you run your own rate and split, and how much can an offerwall earn? scales the same logic up to a whole audience.

How multi-step and revshare offers are calculated

A multi-step offer is several conversions in one card. On Sharklio, each step has its own payout and its own reward, and each one is credited as its own transaction, with its own {transaction_id} and its own postback. The reward the wall shows for the offer is the total of all its steps, which is why users see 2,912 coins up front but receive 208 first.

Early steps often earn more in total than deep ones, because many more users reach them: in the example, steps 1 and 2 earned $46.80 of the $62.40. Multi-event offers explains how advertisers design the step ladder.

Revshare offers work differently. They pay a share of each deal the user makes, so they can be credited several times. Each credit is calculated with the same formula from the payout of that credit. In the Sharklio Offers API, reward is the lowest amount of one credit and reward_max the most it can reach, which is useful if you build your own offerwall with the API.

Bonus periods: more currency, same dollars

A bonus is the one setting that changes the reward without changing the payout. On Sharklio you turn on Bonus on the Currency tab and set a percentage up to 500. You can add a start and an end, in the time zone of your account, and repeat it every day or every week; a repeating bonus needs a start and an end. While it runs, every reward on the wall, in the Offers API and in the mobile SDKs is higher by that percentage, and if the bonus has an end, users see a live countdown on the wall.

The bonus is paid from your own share. Your earnings in US dollars stay the same, and your users get more of your currency for them. In the example, a 20% bonus on Publisher A turns step 1 into 0.26 × 1,000 × 80% × 1.2 = 249.6, shown as 250 coins, and the full offer into 3,495 coins. If those coins cash out at 1,000 per $1, users now receive $3.495 of value for $3.64 of earnings, so A’s margin shrinks from $0.728 to $0.145 while the bonus runs.

Timing matters too. A step gets the bonus when it is credited while the bonus runs. A step credited after the bonus ends gets the normal reward, even if the user started the offer during the bonus. For a long multi-step offer, tell users that in your announcement.

Why the same offer pays differently by country and device

The formula on your side never changes by country. The payout does. Advertisers set different payouts for different countries and devices, and sometimes skip a country entirely. A simple, made-up view of the example game offer:

The reasons are the advertiser’s economics, not the wall’s:

• Value per user differs by country. In-app spending, subscription prices and ad prices vary a lot between markets, so a new user in one country is worth several times one in another. Tier 1, 2 and 3 countries explains the grouping most networks use, and cost per install by country shows the advertiser’s view.
• Advertisers price devices separately. This is normal across advertising. Google’s Google Ads help page on bid adjustments says advertisers can change bids by device from -100% to +900% and by location from -90% to +900% (checked on October 22, 2026). Offer payouts follow the same logic.
• Some offers only exist on one platform. An iOS app cannot be installed on Android, so its offer only appears on iPhones and iPads.

On Sharklio, the offers a user sees depend on their country and device, and users on VPNs, proxies, Tor or data center networks are blocked from the wall, so users cannot pick a better-paying country by hiding where they are. How to choose the offers your users see covers the filters you control.

What happens to the payout when an offer is reversed

A reversal, also called a chargeback, takes back a result that was already credited. Common reasons are fraud such as multiple accounts or hidden VPN traffic, a purchase that was refunded, or requirements that turned out not to be met. Purchase steps carry the longest risk: Stripe’s guide to how disputes work says card networks usually let cardholders dispute a payment within 120 days of the original payment, and sometimes longer (checked on October 22, 2026). An advertiser that loses that money may reverse the conversion it paid for.

On Sharklio, a reversal never changes the postback you already received. A new postback arrives for the same {transaction_id}, with status 2 and the same positive {reward} and {payout} as the credit it cancels. The payout comes off your Sharklio balance, and you take the reward back from the user, once, and only if you credited that transaction.

In the example, if one of the six purchases is refunded, Publisher A receives a status 2 postback with payout 2.6 and reward 2080. Earnings drop from $62.40 to $59.80, and A removes 2,080 coins from that user. If the user already spent them, A’s own terms decide what happens next. Because the reward is fixed when the step is credited, a reversal carries the old amount even if A has changed its rate or ended a bonus since. Publisher earnings and reversals covers the full lifecycle, and what is a reversal rate? shows how to track it.

The same rule explains most “wrong reward” tickets. The wall shows the reward for your current settings and any bonus running now. The postback carries the reward calculated when the step was credited. A bonus that ended in between, or a settings change, makes the two differ.

Frequently asked questions