Incent vs Non-Incent Offers: What Incent Traffic Means

Incent vs non-incent traffic: what is the difference?

Incent (incentivized) traffic comes from users who complete an advertiser’s action because they get a reward for it, such as coins, points, or cashback. Non-incent traffic comes from users who take the same action with no reward tied to it, for example after a search, a social ad, or a recommendation. Advertisers treat the two as different products: incent offers usually pay less per action and ask for deeper goals, and many offers allow only one kind, which the offer terms state as “incent allowed” or “no incent”.

Neither label is a quality grade on its own. The label tells the advertiser why the user acted, and the advertiser prices and checks the traffic on that basis. Problems start when the label is wrong.

Definitions in plain words

What is incent traffic?

Traffic is incentivized when the user is offered something of value in exchange for the action the advertiser pays for. Google used a simple version of this test in its 2017 Android Developers Blog post on incentivized ratings, reviews, and installs: an action is incentivized if the user is offered money, goods, or the equivalent in exchange for it. Common incent sources:

• Offerwalls inside apps, games, and websites, where users earn the property’s own currency per completed offer. What is an offerwall? explains the format.
• GPT (get-paid-to) and rewards sites, covered in What is a GPT site?
• Content lockers, where an offer unlocks a file or page. Content lockers vs offerwalls compares the two.
• Cashback, rebates, and donations. The partnership platform impact.com lists rebates, social gaming credits, and donations funded by the affiliate’s commission as ways of incentivizing installs. If part of the payout reaches the user, the traffic is incent.

What is non-incent traffic?

Non-incentivized traffic is any traffic where the user gets nothing for completing the action. Search ads, social and video ads, display banners, influencer posts, email newsletters, comparison sites, and organic content are the usual sources. The user installs the app or signs up because they want the product.

The one-question test

Ask: does the user receive a reward because they completed the action the advertiser pays for? If yes, the traffic is incent, whatever the source calls itself. A rewarded video, where the reward is for watching an ad and nothing is paid for installing the app shown, is a separate format; What are rewarded ads? covers it. When in doubt, read how the offer terms classify a source, or ask before sending traffic.

Incent vs non-incent side by side

The rows describe the usual direction, not fixed numbers. Payouts and retention depend on the advertiser, the vertical, the country, and above all on the task the user is asked to complete.

Why advertisers price incent and non-incent traffic differently

An advertiser is not really buying an install or a sign-up. They are buying what that user does next: return visits, purchases, a funded account. The price they can afford per action is the value of the average user it brings, minus their target margin. Incent and non-incent users bring different value, so they get different prices.

• Rewarded users retain and spend less on average. In the same 2017 post, Google said its research found that incentivized users generally have lower retention rates and make fewer in-app purchases than users from other channels, while still calling incentivized installs a legitimate acquisition channel for some developers.
• Many do the minimum. AppsFlyer, a mobile measurement partner (MMP), describes in its post on the good, the bad, and the ugly of rewarded advertising how offerwall users who are rewarded for an install often do only what the reward requires and then stop using the app. The post cites 2017 data where average 30-day retention for gaming apps was 2.4% to 4.4%, against 1.1% for incent-heavy networks. Treat those figures as dated context, not a current benchmark.
• Incent is cheaper to produce. A rewards property can send users to a task on demand, in the countries the advertiser picks. That reliability is worth something, but each action is worth less, so the payout per basic action is lower.

The answer most advertisers reach is not “avoid incent” but “pay incent for a deeper event”. Instead of paying for an install, they pay for reaching level 10 or making a first purchase, which filters out users who only wanted the reward. Splitting one offer into several paid steps is explained in Multi-event offers, and the pricing model behind it in What is CPA?

Why some offers say “no incent”

A “no incent” or “non-incent only” line in an offer means the advertiser has priced it for users who act without a reward and will not accept rewarded users at that price. Common reasons:

1. The payout assumes organic-like value. The advertiser’s maximum payout was worked out from the lifetime value of non-incent users. Rewarded users at the same price would lose them money.
2. The paid event is shallow. An offer that pays on install, on a single form, or on a free trial start is easy to complete for a reward and walk away from. SOI vs DOI offers shows the same problem for lead forms.
3. The vertical needs intent. Lenders, insurers, and subscription services want applicants who need the product. A user filling in a quote to earn coins wastes the advertiser’s sales time and can create compliance problems.
4. Brand and store concerns. Some brands do not want to appear next to rewards, and some app publishers worry about how app stores view rewarded installs (see below).
5. Clean measurement. An advertiser testing a new market or creative wants to see how real prospects behave. Rewarded users would distort the result.

Offers can also be partly open: incent allowed, but not for the install alone, or only in certain countries, or never with any mention of ratings. Read the full terms, not just the label.

What happens when incent traffic reaches a non-incent offer

Sending rewarded users to an offer that does not allow them is treated as a form of fraud, not a minor mistake. impact.com describes it as install fraud in its explainer on mislabeled incentivized traffic: when incentivized traffic is unlabeled or mislabeled as non-incentivized, the publisher collects a higher CPI payout than the installs are worth, because users from incentivized downloads generally bring less long-term value.

How advertisers notice

Advertisers do not need to see your wall to find out. Their own data shows it: day 1 and day 7 retention far below their other sources, almost no events after the paid one, conversions that arrive in bursts, and many installs from one sub ID that never open the app again. An MMP groups all of this by source, as explained in What is an MMP?

What it costs

• Rejected conversions: results not yet credited are scrubbed and never paid.
• Reversals: results already credited are reversed, often for the whole period, not only the obvious cases. What is a reversal rate? shows how that hits your earnings.
• Blocked sources: the sub ID, app, or publisher can be blocked from the offer, and sometimes from the advertiser’s other offers.
• Closed accounts: networks protect their advertiser relationships, so repeated mislabeling can end the publisher account, and earnings from the affected traffic are typically withheld.
• Lost offers for everyone: an advertiser who receives mislabeled traffic may pause the offer for the whole network.

How Google Play and the App Store treat incentivized actions

App store rules apply to the apps being promoted and to rewards apps distributed through the stores. Both stores draw the same hard line around ratings and reviews; they differ in how they word the rest. Policy facts checked on October 29, 2026; read the current text before you launch.

The practical rule is the same on both stores: reward real use inside the app, never ratings or reviews, and never promise an advertiser a chart position. The Google side is covered in depth in Incentivized installs: Google Play policy, and the review rule on both stores in Can you pay for app reviews?

What this means if you run a rewards property

If your users earn your currency for completing offers, all of your offer traffic is incent, with no exceptions. That makes your side simple:

1. Only show offers that accept rewarded users. Never mix non-incent offers from another source into your wall or earn page.
2. Never move offer links outside the wall. Rewarding clicks on tracking links in chats, forums, or paid-to-click sites is incent traffic in places nobody approved. Sharklio’s traffic quality rules list this as prohibited.
3. Describe tasks honestly. “Install and reach level 10” brings users who know what is asked; “easy free coins” brings users who quit after the install, and those show up as reversals.
4. Never reward ratings, reviews, follows, or likes, even if a user asks. Stores and platforms forbid it, and it puts the advertiser’s app at risk.
5. Watch your reports by offer and sub ID. A source with rising reversals is the first sign that something on your side needs fixing.

Rewarded users are not a lesser audience. They are a different one, and advertisers who design for them, as Incentivized traffic explained describes, buy real results from it.

Incent traffic on Sharklio

Sharklio is a pay-per-result affiliate network where every conversion comes from a user who completed an offer on a publisher’s offerwall and earned that publisher’s currency for it. In the terms of this article, all Sharklio traffic is incent, and it is labeled that way from the start. Advertisers who work with us know their offer reaches rewarded users, and they agree the paid events with us on that basis.

Frequently asked questions