• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, November 23, 2022

Google is testing a new feature with publishers that will enable the companies to “diversify their revenue” by providing new choices to monetize the site alongside traditional ads.

The company says it will have more to share in the future as the feature evolves and Google collects feedback from publishers, the company confirmed.  

The working name of the feature is Rewarded Ad Gate.

A blog forum user who goes by the name Lexipixel discovered the feature one day while logging in to an account on the AdSense platform. The message read: “The Rewarded Ad Gate beta program will give you an opportunity to monetize your most engaged users. If a user frequently visits your site, you’ll have a way to collect additional ad revenue.”

The Rewarded Ad Gate will serve up to a visitor on their fifth page view of each month. If the visitor chooses to view a short ad, a video or image ad will play for 30 seconds or less.

A “Thank you” message will appear after the ad completes. The visitor then gains access to the site after the message plays.

If the user chooses not to view a short ad, they won’t be able to access the site until their page views reset the following month or they choose to view the ad.

Google also offers rewarded interstitial advertisements, which became available for the web earlier this year.

Rewarded interstitial ads are commonly used in app inventory as well, especially among gaming apps to provide features like extra lives or power-ups, and are also supported by AdMob.

There is a distinct difference between this new feature and rewarded interstitial ads. The monetization option being tested in beta is a type of rewarded ad, but specifically focused on access to a website for a period of time.

Rewarded interstitials, in contrast, can range across a variety of different rewards.