Unity Ads is one of the best In-App networks with a huge user base (>1.5 billion), where you can consistently pour large budgets with ROI of 200% and higher.
However, there are many pitfalls that can hinder your success in Unity Ads, from difficulties in obtaining agency accounts and replenishing them to problems with creating suitable creatives.
In this review, we will discuss how to overcome the challenges of working with Unity Ads, successfully launch your campaign, and scale effectively.

Unity Ads: what is it and for whom is it?

Unity Ads was originally created as a third-party project by Unity Technologies. The company developed its own game engine and decided to provide a tool for monetizing apps.
Unity Ads is primarily used by white-label advertisers. While it is primarily used by game developers, the number of non-game advertisers has increased in recent years.
The source is also highly popular among arbitrageurs, who use it to drive traffic to SP offers and finance. However, the most common use of Unity Ads is for gambling.
In this article, we will discuss how to launch traffic from Unity Ads.

How to start traffic with Unity Ads

There are two ways to get traffic from Unity Ads: through DSP and SSP.
Unity Ads sells some of its traffic directly through its own agency accounts, which is known as the DSP model.
You can also buy traffic from Unity Ads through the SSP model by running ads through the agency accounts of resellers, such as Moloco Ads, HYBE, and others.

Working directly with Unity Ads through an agency account will be better, as advertising optimization is faster and more efficient.

When registering an account on your own, you will need to prepare for the challenges of moderation in advance. This includes providing your personal information, company documents, offer descriptions, and links. Additionally, you should be prepared for lengthy discussions regarding each creative with support.

When you get an account through the Profit Rental agency, the process becomes much easier. Accesses are issued almost instantly. In addition, the manager will answer any questions and always tell you how to make creatives better to pass moderation, or set up the technical part of the launch.

After receiving your account, you can proceed to launching your first ad:

We log in to our account and are immediately taken to the main page.
Click on the Growth tab and then click on the "Add a new app" button.
We add our own application, which we will later use to pour.
We set up conversion tracking in our app — Profit Rental managers are always ready to provide you with advice on this technical issue (as well as on others).
We create creatives for our advertising campaign.
Adding them via Creative Packs
Select the desired language (this is important for moderation) and click Create.
After some time, we check the moderation process.
When the creatives pass it successfully, you can safely launch the ad. To do this, go to the Apps tab, find your app, and click “Create”.
Select the goal of the Installs campaign (others will only open if the spendout is >$500 per month).
We add uploaded and approved creatives.
Targeting. In Unity Ads, you can target by device type, country and region, specific placement (with individual bids), and categories.
Additionally, you can connect ready-made white and black lists to increase your ROI.
Then, all you have to do is set up event attribution links in the app and set a budget.

Tips for working with Unity Ads

There are some basic tips for working with Unity Ads that relate to different components of the bay.

Auction
Payment for traffic is mainly based on CPI (however, it is possible to pour by CPA/ROAS)
The auction in Unity will work as follows: all bidded bids are translated into eCPM.
eCPM is formed based on your bid and the probability of conversion. For example, out of 1000 views, you get 5 installations, which means that with CPI=$3, your eCPM will be $15. If the conversion or bid is higher, the eCPM will also increase.
However, it is worth emphasizing that eCPM is an internal metric for calculating positions in the Unity Ads auction. Traffic is always paid for in install/action, not impressions.
Next, the eCPM of your creative is compared to your competitors. Whoever has a higher eCPM gets impressions.
When buying traffic by CPA and ROAS models, everything works in the same way - only the probability of conversion is added to the calculation formula.
It is worth noting that Unity Ads is budget-dependent. If your account balance is below \$1,000, your ads will barely run.
When setting your daily budget and average bid, you can refer to this table:

Analytics and scaling
The analysis of the leak in Unity Ads is simplified as follows. If the campaign is running but there is almost no coverage, you need to increase the bid.
If the coverage is normal but the ROI is -30%, you should give the model a couple of days to optimize and learn, while adding new creatives and monitoring changes. The algorithm may be searching for the perfect audience.
If the ROI is -50%, it is a clear leak, and you should reduce the bid by no more than 15-20% per day. If the bundle is still losing money, it should be discarded.

Scaling successful bundles in Unity Ads is mainly done by combining three methods:

Increase the budget for existing campaigns;
Launching new creatives;
Optimization of publishers.

At the same time, duplicating successful campaigns sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. A common issue that arises when scaling with duplicates is that the spend of duplicated campaigns drops by dozens of times compared to the original.

Budgets
As already mentioned, the spend in Unity strongly depends on the state of the balance on the account. If the cabinet balance will be lower than $1-2 thousand, then the volume of traffic will be cut.
Therefore, it is always worth keeping the balance above $2500-3000 and also timely replenish the account (when working through the agency, it is available in several convenient ways).

Creatives
The main work of media buying when uploading through Unity Ads is to create and push through new creatives through moderation.
Other agencies that provide access to Unity Ads may have a large number of restrictions on creating creatives. For example:

Write on gambling creatives “Strictly +18”.
Leave notes about responsible gaming.
Try not to pour it into regular slots.
A ban on excessive motivation of players by “easy money”.

However, when working through Profit Rental's agency offices, you can easily bypass these rules, and the moderation process will still be successful.
CR of creatives plays a crucial role in Unity Ads (as you may remember, it is part of the eCPM formula that drives the entire auction process).
Therefore, it is important to constantly test a large number of creatives and identify the most engaging elements (graphical, auditory, and semantic).

Traffic quality
Of course, if you use high-quality approaches from Unity on iOS, the quality of traffic will be at the level of Google PPC. However, simpler options for Unity Ads sometimes have a problem with low-quality traffic.
It comes mainly from games like My Talking Tom, Candy Crush Saga, or Subway Surfers — for in-game rewards, users are willing to watch ads/download your app, but they won't do anything in it.
There are several ways to solve this traffic problem:

Analytics through Reports Builder. This is a tool in the account that allows you to analyze the results by Source App ID and identify the apps where the ads were effective and ineffective based on the statistics of installs and deposits. However, to obtain a comprehensive database, you will need to spend tens of thousands of dollars, and this is only for one GEO.
You can also set up external traffic tracking and analyze the results in your tracker.
Alternatively, you can simply purchase ready-made black and white lists from the agency. This will save you time and money on testing garbage placements.

Conclusions

Unity Ads has a high-quality audience, easy moderation, and low competition in a number of verticals.
This source is perfect for large teams that want to diversify their traffic and avoid relying on Facebook or Google, as well as for solo buyers. The only limitation is that you need a decent amount of turnover (at least $15,000 in our experience), as it can take $1,000 or more to test a single ad set.
However, there are a number of difficulties that can slow down your work at the start — these are problems with documents and moderation, a number of technical issues (for example, the settings of the Advanced Policy toggle), optimization for placements, and much more.
Therefore, if you are looking for agency accounts for an easy start in Unity Ads and other sources, we, Profit Rental, offer the most favorable conditions. Our support is always available! We help with configuration, provide expertise on your advertising campaigns, and answer any other questions.
To find out all the details and rent an account, write to our bot — our managers will contact you soon!
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