These days in-app purchases are a pretty common feature to see not just in games, but other apps as well where it could come in the form of unlocking additional features or purchasing a subscription to a service. These in-app items aren’t free, but if you’d rather not spend money on it, Google has a way.The company has recently announced that they will soon start to reward users with in-app items by watching ads. According to Google, “Rewarded products make it easy for Google Play developers to increase their monetized user base. Our first rewarded product offering will be in a video format. Users can elect to watch a video advertisement and upon completion be rewarded with virtual goods or in-game currency. In the example below, the user selects ‘watch ad’, views the video, and then is granted 100 coins.”
This means that in the future if you’d rather not spend real-life money for certain in-app purchases, you can choose to earn them by watching ads instead. Given that ads also help developers generate revenue, it kind of adds up in the end. This move also seems to sync up rather nicely with Google’s previous announcement where they introduced shoppable ads to Google Image search.