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In today’s episode, we will dive into the world of Unity Ads & explore how you can maximize your mobile app advertising campaigns.

Unity Ads has become a key mobile ad platform for advertising mobile apps, as it reaches a wide audience of mobile gamers. With its integration into the Unity game engine, Unity Ads has made it easy for game developers to monetize their apps by displaying ads within their games. 

However, to get the most out of your campaigns, you need to understand how it works and how to optimize your ads for maximum performance – which is what we’ll dive into today. We will also explore how to optimize these campaigns and cover eligibility criteria for running ROAS and retention campaign goals.

How Unity Ads Works

Unity Ads offers a range of ad formats that allow game developers to monetize their apps by displaying ads within their games. It allows targeting specific demographics and regions, making it easier for game developers to reach their desired audience.

It uses probabilistic matching on iOS, using device signals to attribute, optimize and report on performance – which can often lead it to perform well on iOS, particularly for games.

Types of Campaigns Available

Unity Ads offers various types of campaigns to promote your app or game. Install campaigns, creative testing, ROAS campaigns, and retention campaigns are some of the primary campaigns available. 

Install Campaigns: These campaigns are designed to drive app installs. You can target users based on demographics, interests, and behaviors, as well as specific countries or regions. These typically are learning campaigns – and tend not to have great ROAS.

Creative Testing (Beta): This type of campaign allows you to test different ad creatives to see which ones perform best. You can use this campaign to test different ad formats, images, and messaging, and optimize your ads for maximum performance. Creative packs being tested in a Creative Testing campaign will be explored with equal opportunity in the same audience within the same timeframe.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) Campaigns: These campaigns are designed to maximize the return on your ad spend. You set a specific target ROAS, and Unity Ads uses machine learning to optimize your campaigns to achieve that goal.

Retention Campaigns: These campaigns are designed with a goal to acquire users who are more likely to use your app for seven or more days.

Meeting Eligibility Criteria for Successful ROAS and Retention Campaigns on Unity Ads

ROAS and retention campaigns are not available for all advertisers – and these need to be unlocked.

Understanding the eligibility criteria for ROAS and retention campaigns is crucial when planning your Unity Ads strategy. Specific requirements must be met to optimize your campaigns for success. 

Eligibility Criteria for ROAS and Retention Campaigns

If you’re planning to run ROAS or retention campaign goals on Unity Ads (you can start with install campaigns right away), it’s important to understand the eligibility criteria. This will help ensure that your campaigns are optimized for success and that you’re getting the most out of your ad spend.

There are specific requirements that you need to comply with, depending on whether you’re passing data through a Unity SDK or through your MMP (Mobile Measurement Partner). Let’s take a closer look at these requirements.

-> Pass data through a Unity SDK

To run retention campaigns in a specific geo, you need to have a minimum of 10 retained users in that geo over the 30-day cohorts. 

It’s important to note that this is counted over all installs, not just Unity-attributed installs. Only users making in-app purchases (IAPs) through the platform provider’s store are considered paying users.

For IAP ROAS campaigns in a specific geo, you need to have a minimum of 10 paying users in that geo over the 30-day cohorts. Similar to retention campaigns, this is counted over all installs, not just Unity-attributed installs.

-> Pass data via MMP postbacks

If you’re passing data via MMP postbacks, the requirements are slightly different. 

To run retention campaigns in a specific geo, you need to have a minimum of 100 Unity-attributed installs in that geo over the 30-day cohort. Additionally, the D7 retention rate over the 30-day cohort needs to be at least 1%.

For IAP ROAS campaigns in a specific geo, you need to have a minimum of 10 paying users in that geo over the 30-day cohort. This is counted over Unity-attributed installs.

For ad revenue ROAS campaigns in a specific geo, you need to have a minimum of 200 Unity-attributed installs in that geo over the fully-matured D7 cohort. The cohort must also have generated some ad revenue passed to Unity via the MMP, but it can include users who have not generated ad revenue.

Crafting Engaging Ad Creatives: Strategies for Unity Ads Campaigns

Creating effective ad creatives is essential for the success of mobile ad campaigns. Understanding what type of ad content resonates with your target audience is crucial for optimizing your ads for maximum performance. Here are key insights into the elements that work and those that don’t in ad creatives.

1. Actual Gameplay is Key

One of the most important findings is that ad creatives that showcase actual gameplay tend to perform better than any other type of content. This is because users are able to see what the game looks like and get a sense of what it would be like to play. This type of creative is particularly effective when targeting gamers, as they are more likely to be interested in seeing actual gameplay footage.

2. Voice-Over is More Effective than On-screen Text

Another important insight is that voice-over tends to perform better than on-screen text for instructions. This is likely because users are more likely to pay attention to audio than they are to written text. Including voice-over instructions can help ensure that users understand how to play the game and what the objectives are.

3. Incentivized Real Money (Cashouts) Do Not Work

While it may seem like offering users the chance to win real money would be a surefire way to get their attention, it turns out that incentivized cashouts are not very effective. Users are often skeptical of these types of offers, and may not trust that they will actually receive the money if they win. Instead, focus on offering incentives like in-game currency or other virtual rewards.

4. Show Gameplay of Losing or Failing at the Game

Another surprising finding is that ad creatives that show gameplay of the player losing or failing at the game tend to be more effective than those that only show successful gameplay. This is likely because it makes the game seem more challenging and rewarding to play. By showing that the game is not easy to win, users may be more interested in trying it out for themselves.

See below ad creatives with top-performing strategies by genres: 

Source: Mobile Insights 2022: Growth and Monetization

Maximizing Ad Campaign Performance with Creative and Source App Optimizations

Creating effective ad creatives and optimizing source apps are vital components of running successful ad campaigns. Unity Ads offers valuable features that allow you to optimize your ad creatives and improve the overall performance of your campaigns. By tracking the performance of your creatives and identifying underperforming source apps, you can ensure that your ad spend is utilized efficiently. 

Creative Optimizations

Creating effective ad creatives is a crucial aspect of running successful ad campaigns. Unity Ads, offers various features to optimize ad creatives and improve campaign performance.

While testing different creatives, it’s crucial to track their performance and exclude low-performing creatives from your campaigns. This approach will ensure that you are not wasting ad spend on underperforming ads. Unity Ads provides various metrics, such as cost per install (CPI), click-through rate (CTR), and conversion rate, to help you evaluate the performance of your ad creatives.

For example, suppose you find that certain ad creatives have a higher CPI/low ROAS than others. In that case, you can exclude them from your campaigns as part of your optimizations to improve performance. This approach will help you save money while still running effective ad campaigns.

Source App Optimizations

When running ad campaigns on Unity Ads, it is important to keep an eye on the performance of your source apps. A source app is an app that generates the ad impression that leads to a user clicking and installing your promoted app.

To get the most out of your campaigns, you need to identify underperforming source apps and exclude them from your campaigns. This can be done by adding them to the campaign ‘blocklist’, which will ensure that your ads are not shown to these sources. By doing so, you can conserve your ad spend and focus on displaying ads to top-performing source apps.

It is also important to note that optimizing source apps requires patience and data-driven decision-making. In general, optimize source apps once each source app hits more than 30 or 50 installs. This approach ensures that decisions are not made hastily and that enough data is collected to make informed decisions on how to optimize your campaigns for maximum performance.

Maximize the effectiveness

To maximize the effectiveness of your ad campaigns on Unity Ads, it’s important to ensure that your ads reach the right audience and drive maximum engagement and conversions. One effective way to achieve this is by targeting your ads to specific categories. This can be done by working with Unity Ads representatives to target specific categories for your ad campaigns and get relevant source apps to add to the allowlist.

Unity Ads offers heatmaps separated by game genre, which can help you identify which categories are most popular among your target audience. By using these heatmaps, you can make more informed decisions about where to place your ads to ensure maximum impact on your ad spend.

For example, if you have a hyper-casual gaming app, you can use the heatmaps to identify the most popular genres among your target audience and target your ads on those specific genres, such as role-playing and other hypercasual games. This can help drive maximum click-through rates and conversions for your ad campaigns.

Working with Unity Ads representatives to target specific categories for your ad campaigns can also help ensure that your ads are displayed on relevant apps, which can further improve engagement and conversions. 

Source: Mobile Insights 2022: Growth and Monetization

By adding relevant source apps to the allowlist, you can target your ads to specific categories and ensure that they are displayed on relevant apps that are popular among your target audience. To do that, you need to work with Unity Ads representatives to target specific categories for your ad campaigns, get relevant source apps & add them to the allowlist.

To make the most of Unity Ads and achieve your marketing goals effectively, understanding how to optimize your campaigns is crucial. 

By focusing on creative optimizations, you can track and exclude low-performing ad creatives, saving your ad spend and improving campaign performance. Additionally, optimizing your source apps by identifying and excluding underperforming sources allows you to concentrate on displaying ads to top-performing apps, resulting in more effective engagement and conversions. 

By leveraging the features and insights offered by Unity Ads, you can target specific categories, use heatmaps, and work with Unity Ads representatives to ensure your ads reach the right audience. With these optimization strategies in place, you can maximize the performance of your ad campaigns and effectively advertise your mobile app to a vast audience of mobile gamers.

That’s all for today, thank you! 

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast fix? This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

Constructive criticism and suggestions for improvement are welcome, whether on podcasting platforms – or by email to shamanth@rocketshiphq.com. We read all the reviews & I want to make this podcast better.

Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!