Spin-the-wheel and scratch card mechanics need no tutorial, because everybody already knows what they do. That is why they turn up far outside gaming: food delivery apps offering a first-order discount, retailers handing out a sign-up code, fintech apps revealing a cashback bonus, casual games giving away a starter pack. One gesture, a moment of anticipation, and a reward that becomes the call to action.
The same familiarity is what makes them risky. A viewer reads the outcome of a wheel as a prize, and a prize is a promise. Reward mechanics are at once the fastest-reading mechanic in advertising and one of the easiest to get wrong in a way that reaches a policy team.
Why reveal mechanics work
They collapse the whole playable into three beats that need no explanation: an action, a wait, a payout. The learning cost is zero, the anticipation is built into the mechanic rather than engineered around it, and the payout arrives with its own call to action attached. Claim 20% off is a better button label than Download now, because it names what the tap gets you.
They also carry a commercial message most mechanics cannot. A match-3 board says nothing about an offer. A wheel is an offer: displayed as a range, landing on a specific one.
Spin, scratch or slot
- Wheel: one tap and a few seconds of anticipation, with every possible outcome visible at once. Best when the message is a range of rewards, or that everyone wins something.
- Scratch card: a continuous drag, with the reward emerging under the finger. The most tactile of the three and the best for a single reward. Complete the reveal once a generous share of the panel is scratched; nobody should have to clear every pixel.
- Slot: three reels and the strongest casino connotation of any mechanic. Natural for a social casino game; for a supermarket or a bank it signals gambling, which is rarely the association the brand wanted.
Decide the payout before you design the wheel
The design question that matters is not how the wheel looks but what it is allowed to land on. There are only two honest structures.
A universal reward. Every viewer gets the same offer and the wheel lands on it every time. That is acceptable only if the offer really is what every viewer receives after the click, and only if the other segments are real too. A wheel whose other segments show prizes that can never come up is presenting odds that do not exist.
A real draw. Outcomes are random, the odds are real, and every reward is honoured. That makes it a promotional game in the legal sense, which in many countries comes with rules of its own: published terms, eligibility, sometimes a free entry route. It needs a legal review, not just a creative one.
The rule that keeps you out of trouble
Everything the wheel or card displays must be something a viewer could actually receive, and whatever the ad lands on must be exactly what they get after they tap. The test is the one that separates a fair near-miss from a manipulative one: if the viewer could see how the outcome was decided, would they feel they had been lied to?
The payout has to survive the click
The commonest failure is not a dishonest wheel but a broken promise downstream. The ad reveals 20% off, the viewer taps, and the landing page or the app has no idea anything was won. Carry the reward through: a visible code on the result screen the viewer can use, the reward passed as a parameter on a web destination, or a value delivered through the measurement partner's link into the app. State the conditions on the result screen, in type large enough to read: first order only, minimum basket, expiry date. A reward whose conditions first appear at checkout is how an ad earns complaints.
Where gambling rules begin
For an actual gambling or casino product, advertising is regulated in its own right. Google's Gambling and games policy requires certification for gambling ads, and treats social casino games (simulated gambling with no opportunity to win anything of value) as a category with its own certification route. Its 28 October 2025 update made explicit that sweepstakes casinos are not social casino games and cannot be certified as one; products offering redemption or winnings fall under the stricter online gambling rules, with licensing requirements that vary by country.
A discount wheel for a food delivery app is not gambling, but it borrows the visual language, and that matters in two places. Slot reels, chips and card tables push a non-gambling creative toward the look of a regulated category and invite scrutiny it does not need. And for any app with a younger audience, chance-based reward mechanics are the wrong tool entirely. See the kids' apps guide.
Designing the moment
- Eight to twelve segments at most, with labels readable at phone size. A wheel of twenty tiny labels is a texture, not a set of prizes.
- Spin for around three seconds with a strong ease-out and a slight settle, and land on the centre of a segment rather than on a line. A result on a boundary looks disputed.
- For a scratch card, show a coin or a finger cursor, leave scratch dust on the panel, and finish the reveal with a burst the moment the threshold is crossed.
- Bring sound in only after the first tap, and give the payout its own sting.
- Show the call to action the instant the reward lands, labelled with the reward itself.
Judge it on redemption, not interaction
Reveal mechanics produce excellent interaction rates almost regardless of quality, because spinning a wheel is irresistible and costs nothing. The number that tells you whether the mechanic earns its place is redemption: orders, sign-ups or first purchases that used the reward. Test it against the plainest alternative: a static creative stating the same offer. If the wheel does not beat the sentence on redeemed orders, it was decoration.
Building one in Playable Ads Maker
Spin the Wheel, Scratch Card and Slot Machine are prebuilt Game Templates: configure the rewards, swap in your own art, and add a Particle FX burst for the reveal. Industry versions show them outside gaming: Food Delivery – Spin & Dine, Retail – Scratch & Save and Scratch Card – Treasure Map. The export wires the button to each network's store exit, or to a web destination that can carry the code.
Create playable end cards in minutes—no code required.
Open Playable Ads Maker