Offerwall Bonus Events: How to Run Boosts That Pay Off

What is an offerwall bonus event, and does it boost revenue?

An offerwall bonus event is a set period, often a weekend or an evening, during which every reward on your wall is raised by a percentage, for example 20% more coins. It can boost offerwall revenue because a deadline gives inactive users a reason to come back and start an offer now rather than later. It only pays off if the extra activity is larger than the extra currency you hand out, so size the boost with your margin in mind, run it rarely, and compare your reports before, during and after the event.

This guide covers timing, sizing, announcements, the “waiting for the next bonus” problem, and measurement. For the everyday loops around it, such as daily check-ins and streaks, see Rewards app retention: bonuses, streaks and levels.

Why time-limited boosts work

Two effects do most of the work.

• Scarcity raises perceived value. In a classic study, Worchel, Lee and Adewole asked people to rate cookies from a jar with two cookies or a jar with ten. The cookies from the nearly empty jar were rated as more desirable, and cookies that went from plentiful to scarce were rated highest of all (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975). A boost that ends is worth more in users’ eyes than the same boost forever.
• Deadlines pull action forward. Inman and McAlister studied grocery coupon redemptions and found a second spike just before the coupons expired, which they explained with regret: people act to avoid missing out (Journal of Marketing Research, 1994). Your countdown does the same job as the expiry date.

The second effect is also the main risk: a deadline can create new activity, or just move next week’s activity into this weekend. Only the first kind is worth paying for. A good event also re-engages users who drifted away, because “20% more coins until Sunday” is a better reason to open a notification than “new offers available”.

How to pick the timing

Run the event when your users have time and attention, and when the people you want to bring back are most likely to see the announcement. Start with your own data, then layer in the calendar.

Your own peak hours and days

In the Sharklio dashboard, set the date menu to Today or Yesterday and the Earnings panel shows credited earnings by hour. For days, open Reports, then Performance, choose the Daily view for the last 90 days, and look at which weekdays bring the most clicks and conversions. Two patterns are common:

• Boost the peak to reach the most users at once, for example Saturday afternoon if that is when your community is online.
• Boost a quiet slot to fill it, for example a weekday evening. This moves less money but carries less risk of simply shifting peak-day earnings.

Longer offers can credit days after the click, so hourly charts show when results are credited, not only when users were active. How to read your dashboard and reports explains each view.

Calendar moments

Keep it short. An evening or a weekend keeps the deadline real; a two-week event stops feeling urgent and pays the boost on ordinary activity too.

How big a boost to give: the margin math

A bonus is paid from your own share. Your earnings per completed offer stay the same, and users receive more of your currency for each one. So the question is how much extra activity you need to stay where you were.

If your user split is s (the share of your earnings passed to users) and the bonus is b, then for every $1 you earn you keep 1 - s normally and 1 - s × (1 + b) during the event. To keep the same profit, event earnings must be higher by this factor:

Break-even earnings multiplier = (1 - s) ÷ (1 - s × (1 + b))

The same formula across a few combinations (illustrative, not benchmarks):

What the table shows:

• The higher your split, the more a bonus costs. A generous base rate leaves little room for events. Small boosts of 10% to 20% are usually enough to create the deadline effect.
• A “double rewards weekend” only works at a low split. Doubling rewards on a 50% split hands out everything you earn. Above 50%, every completed offer during the event loses money. Treat it as a marketing expense with a fixed budget, not as a revenue tool.
• At a 100% split, any bonus is paid out of pocket. That can still be a valid launch or win-back promotion, but plan it as spending.

If your currency cannot be cashed out, such as coins in a game, the cost is not cash but inflation: more currency chasing the same items. Virtual economy design covers that side, and How to set your virtual currency exchange rate explains the base rate and split. Try your own numbers in the virtual currency calculator.

How to announce the event

A bonus nobody hears about only rewards the users who would have come anyway, which is the most expensive outcome. Announce it once at the start, at most once more near the end, and say plainly when it ends and what counts.

Push notifications

Apple’s App Store Review Guidelines (section 4.5.4) say push notifications should not be used for promotions or direct marketing unless users explicitly opted in through consent language in your app, and you must give them a way to opt out in the app. A bonus event announcement is promotional, so send it only to users who agreed to that type of message (checked on October 29, 2026). If you send it with the Notifications composer in Firebase, the Firebase Cloud Messaging docs describe targeting by user segment and an Expires setting that controls how long a message waits for an offline device. Set it to end with your event, so a phone that comes online on Monday does not show “Ends tonight”. Push notifications for rewards apps covers permissions and frequency caps.

What to say

• The size and the end time, with the time zone: “20% more coins on every offer until Sunday 23:59 UTC.”
• What counts. On Sharklio, a step gets the bonus when it is credited while the bonus runs. A step credited after the end gets the normal reward, even if the user started the offer during the event. Say so, especially for games with steps that take days; What are playtime offers? explains why those credit slowly.
• A starting point. Suggest quick offers that can credit before the deadline, so new users get a first reward inside the event.

Tag the link in each announcement with its own sub ID (for example sub2=bonus_oct_push) so you can see later which channel brought conversions. Click ID and sub ID explains how sub IDs come back in reports and postbacks.

How to avoid training users to wait for bonuses

If users learn that a 20% boost arrives every Friday, some will save their offers for Friday. Your weekday earnings drop, your event earnings rise, and you pay the bonus on activity you would have had anyway.

• Keep big events rare and irregular. A few a year, tied to real moments, keep the deadline meaningful.
• Keep repeating boosts small. A modest daily or weekly “happy hour” can build a habit, but at a size where waiting for it is not worth the delay.
• Do not announce the next event far ahead. A few days of notice is enough; a published calendar invites waiting.
• Never lower your base rate to make a bonus look bigger. Users compare screenshots, and a rate that drops and then “rises” destroys trust.
• Make the deadline real. Do not extend an event at the last minute or restart it the next day. The US Federal Trade Commission’s September 2022 dark patterns report names countdown timers that suggest a limited time, when the offer is not actually time-limited, as a way of misleading consumers.

How to measure the result

Compare three periods of the same length: before, during and after the event. In Sharklio, open Reports, then Performance, use the Daily view, and set a custom date range that covers all three. The table gives Clicks, Conversions, Earnings, EPC (earnings per click), Conv. rate and Reversed for each day.

1. Pick a fair baseline. For a weekend event, compare it with the average of the previous few weekends, not with the weekdays before it.
2. Read clicks and conversions together. Clicks show whether the announcement brought people to the wall. Conversions and earnings show whether they finished offers.
3. Watch EPC and conversion rate. If clicks rise but EPC falls, the event brought curious visitors who did not complete much. eCPM and EPC explained covers how to read both.
4. Include the after period. If the week after the event falls below normal, part of the event was borrowed activity. Count that dip against the event.
5. Wait for late credits and reversals. Longer offers credit days later and some results are reversed. Recheck the numbers two to four weeks after the event; What is a reversal rate? explains why a spike in completions can come with a spike in reversals.
6. Check the channels. Group Performance by Sub IDs to see which announcement link brought the most earnings.

Then put the totals into the margin math: the profit you kept during the event, plus or minus the change in the after period, against what the same periods normally bring. For a cleaner answer, test the announcement instead of the bonus: send it to half of your users and compare the groups, as described in A/B testing your earn page. The Reporting API returns the same numbers if you prefer your own spreadsheet.

Setting a bonus on Sharklio

In the dashboard, open Apps, choose your app, and go to the Currency tab. The Bonus box has:

• An On/Off switch. The bonus only runs while it is on.
• Bonus percentage, up to 500. For example, 10 means every reward is 10% higher.
• Repeat: Does not repeat, Every day, or Every week. A repeating bonus needs a start and an end, and runs the same time window each day or week.
• Bonus starts: leave it empty to start right away.
• Bonus ends: leave it empty to run until you turn it off. If you set an end, users see a live countdown on the offerwall.

All times are in your account’s time zone, and a status line shows whether the bonus is active now, when it starts, or that it has ended. While it runs, rewards are higher on the offerwall, in the Offers API and in the mobile SDKs. If you build your own wall, the Offers API returns bonus_percent and a reward_before_bonus for each offer, so you can show the normal amount next to the boosted one. The rewards documentation has the details.

Frequently asked questions