How to Advertise on Offerwalls: A Step-by-Step Guide

What is offerwall advertising?

Offerwall advertising means listing your app, service, or website as an offer on the reward pages of other sites, games, and apps, where users complete actions such as an install, a sign-up, or a first goal in exchange for points from that publisher. You pay only when the action is completed, not for views or clicks. It is a fast way to get a specific action from real people at a price you set, as long as you choose an action that is worth paying for even if the user is rewarded to take it.

How an offerwall campaign reaches users

An offerwall is a page inside a publisher’s property, such as a rewards site, a mobile game, or a community, that lists offers from many advertisers. A user opens it, scans the titles and images, and picks something worth their time. When they finish, the publisher credits them in its own currency, such as coins or gems.

From your side, the chain looks like this:

1. You create a campaign: what the user should do, what proves it, which countries it runs in, and what you pay per result.
2. The network reviews the campaign and shows it on the walls of its publishers.
3. Users who choose your offer complete it. The result is confirmed either by proof that you review, or by a postback from your own server.
4. You are charged for confirmed results, and the publisher rewards the user.

Because the user is rewarded, this is incentivized traffic. That is not a flaw, but it changes how you design the offer. Incentivized traffic explained covers the difference from organic users and the myths around it, so this guide focuses on running the campaign.

Who offerwall advertising fits

It works best when there is a clear action that has value on its own and that someone can check. Some common fits:

It fits less well for pure brand awareness, long B2B sales cycles, and actions nobody can verify. It never fits actions that break another platform’s rules: paid app store reviews and ratings, vote manipulation, or rewarded follows and server joins where the platform forbids them. Sharklio rejects those at campaign review.

How offerwall pricing works: CPI, CPE, and CPA

Offerwalls sell results, but the result can sit at different depths. The deeper it is, the more each one costs and the less you pay for users who leave straight away.

On many offerwalls you set the price yourself as a bid, and a higher bid makes the offer more attractive next to the others on the wall. On Sharklio, a task campaign is priced per approved completion, from $0.01, with a separate bid for each country. A multi-step offer campaign prices each step separately, such as the install, the tutorial, and level 10, and is available by arrangement with our team. Pay only for approved results explains how charging, approval, and disputes work.

Choose a goal that predicts value

The goal is the most important decision in the whole campaign. Rewarded users do what the offer asks, so the offer must ask for something that tells you the user has a real chance of becoming valuable.

1. Look at your existing users. Which early action do your retained or paying users have in common? Finishing setup, creating a first item, and coming back on day 2 are typical candidates.
2. Make it reachable in one sitting. A goal that takes days gets few completions. A goal that takes a few minutes to an hour is realistic for most users.
3. Make it checkable. Either your server can report it, or the user can show it in one screenshot plus a short text answer, such as a username you can look up.
4. Price it from its value. Estimate what a user who reaches the goal is worth to you, then work back to the most you can bid.

Countries and bids

A result is not worth the same everywhere, so price each country on its own. Start with two or three markets you understand, bid higher where a user is worth more to you, and lower where results arrive faster than you need. A simple ceiling for any country is the value of one result divided by your target ROAS. Set bids by country covers quick add groups, device and OS filters, and caps in detail.

Creatives: title, thumbnail, and instructions

On an offerwall your ad is a small card among many. Three things decide whether a user picks it and finishes it correctly:

• Title. Short, concrete, and about the action: “Reach level 5 in our city builder” tells the user more than “Amazing new game”. Avoid hype that the product does not live up to, because disappointed users skip the task.
• Thumbnail. Required on every Sharklio campaign. Use a clear 16:9 image, up to 5MB, that shows the product itself, such as the game scene or the app screen the user will see. Users see it on the wall and again in their history.
• Instructions and proof. Numbered steps, one action each, a clear finish line, and a proof requirement that says exactly what must be visible. This is where most campaigns win or lose. Write instructions that pass review has good and bad examples.

Fair reviewing is part of your creative too. Once a Sharklio task has at least 10 decided completions, users see the share that was approved on the offer itself, and careful users prefer tasks where honest work gets approved.

Measure retention and ROAS, not completions

A completed offer is the start of the measurement, not the end. Track the users each campaign brings in your own analytics, by country and by goal:

• Cost per approved result: what you paid for each completion.
• Day 1, day 7, and day 30 retention: the share of those users who come back.
• Cost per retained user: spend divided by the users still active after a week or a month.
• ROAS: revenue from those users divided by what you spent on them, over a period you trust, such as 30 or 90 days. What is ROAS? shows the calculation.

For task campaigns, ask for proof you can match on your side, such as a username or an in-app ID, so you can follow that group of users in your analytics. Use it only to review and measure the campaign, never to contact or profile individual users.

Fraud protection: approval, proof, and reversals

Any channel that pays per result attracts people who try to fake results. Offerwall advertising handles that in layers:

• Campaign review. Every Sharklio campaign is checked by our team before it goes live, which keeps misleading and prohibited tasks off the wall.
• Proof and approval. In a task campaign you see each completion with its proof, country, device, the time it took, and whether the user opened your starting link, and you approve or reject it with a reason. Rejections that stand cost nothing.
• Frequency caps. Once ever is the right setting for most tasks, so the same user cannot collect the reward twice.
• Reversals. If our team later reverses an approved completion for fraud, its cost returns to your balance. In an offer campaign, your server can reverse a conversion within 30 days with a reversal postback, as the offer postback docs describe.

Two rules keep this fair: reject only when the proof clearly fails the requirements you wrote, and pick an approval window you can keep, because completions you do not review in time are approved automatically.

How to launch your first offerwall campaign, step by step

1. Write down the value of one result. What is a user who reaches your goal worth to you over 30 or 90 days?
2. Pick one goal that your best users reach early and that you can check.
3. Choose two or three countries and set a bid in each below your ceiling.
4. Write the title, instructions, and proof requirement, and prepare a clear 16:9 thumbnail.
5. Set safety limits: a total budget, a daily cap, a once ever frequency cap, and an approval window you can keep.
6. Submit for review, then review completions at fixed times each day once it is live.
7. After one to two weeks, compare cost per retained user by country, move budget to the best markets, and adjust the goal or the bid where results are weak.

Create your first campaign walks through every field of the Sharklio builder.

Frequently asked questions