Sharing my experience advertising with Unity Ads.

I wanted to share my experience advertising with Unity Ads, thus far.
I spent $1000 a day targeting USA for a racing game for 4 days(initially planned for 10 days).
The game was getting around 400 non-organic downloads for 4 days and reached number 60 in Games/Racing top chart for free games in both iPad and iPhone.

non-organic is a direct result of advertising. While organic, is derived from the App Store itself.

So the ads did work, and actually from the first day, the game popped up in the charts after being completely out of charts.

However, that being said.
To my shocking, being ranked 60 in Games/Racing didn't generate the expected amount of downloads, not even close by miles!

It generated 40 downloads! that in USA App Store, where we are looking at a population of over 330 millions.

Talked to Unity Ads, they said, we care about the Ads and non-organic downloads.(still talking to them)
Talked to Apple, they said we can't provide expectations for campaigns! (still talking to them)

I am totally disappointed thus far for spending that much money with absolutely no return on the investment.
The moment you pull the plug on the money hungry campaign, the rank goes back to out of charts!

Anyone has any idea of what's going on?!

 

@samshosho Thanks for sharing!

You know, I have a kind of similar experience, regarding the shock of being ranked and the financial side of it.

My game during its release hit the #2 paid spot in the US, and was either #1 or top 10 in numerous countries. The google play version (which was free) also hit top 50 numbers in numerous countries and yet, financially, it was disappointing.

You could imagine the shock, seeing your game at #2, second to Minecraft in the App Store (USA), and then looking at sales and seeing just a couple thousand dollars.

I haven't spent a penny yet on advertising and have around 850k downloads. I def agree that you shouldn't spend the money on advertising. The few thousand dollars will not compete with the 100k-millions, the big time studios are dumping in.

Networking is key and finding people to that work directly in the games departments to help get you featured or having blogs talk about you. Thats far more valuable, at least in my experience.

 

I had thought that advertising is the final resort to get decent exposure.
Being featured or being talked about in blogs will not do much, if direct advertising didn't!

Direct advertising is guaranteed to bring you certain amount of downloads. In today's words, a $1000 will bring you around 400 downloads in USA and half that cost or less for other countries.

You know talking to Apple, i keep getting replies from one person to another that have nothing to do with my question.

I have one simple question. What is the natural download for a game that ranks in a popular category, such as Games/Racing would get if ranked in top 50 under free games.

Is this question clear enough?

As to Unity Ads, they say, they only guarantee the download percentage of certain impressions.

However, talking here and there, i got to know that not so big studios do spend 6 figures a day!!! advertising that is!

If they spend 6 figures a day, how much are they making?
if spending $1000 brings you 400 new users or not so new, but at least 400 users.
So for $1M spend a day, they get 400k downloads, in my experience in the old times, maybe 6 years ago when i got a hit game it was making $2000 a day at 170k downloads.
So calculating that against the 400k downloads, we get around say $5000 a day.

How spending $1M a day that brings $5k is profitable?

Oh and yeah, you would think, maybe they advertise for few days, actually they advertise none stop since Unity Ads started!

 

what was the download volume?