Unity ADS

Ok, starting with Unity game development democratisation, but we talk about advertising, ADMOB pay only if the user click on banner, ok, Google youtube pay only for showing ADV(every 1000).

What I can’t understand is why Unity-Adv only pay if your game has a lot of download(needs 5000 request to calculate revenue), but if my game game show one video, user complete to see, anyway ADV message is gone, so, make sense to get paid, at the least very low money just for one video.

Consider 95% of developers have very low download but if you put together all theirs video and ADV impression, I think become big numbers… where end up all that money?

Is my thinking so wrong ?

 

An impression is worth nothing. A click is also pretty much worth nothing.

A (click + install + IAP) is when you earn something.

If a user performs a payable request on your very first ad. It will show some revenue once the system registers the purchase. The 5000 thing is mostly because until you start showing a lot of ads you wont see any profit.

EG, On the current ad provider I am using, Ive served around 160,000 ads over a year. And made $140ish, which works out about 0.000875/ad.

 

What I can’t understand is why Unity-Adv "only pay if your game has a lot of download(needs 5000 request to calculate revenue)," but if my game game show one video, user complete to see, anyway ADV message is gone, so, make sense to get paid, at the least very low money just for one video.

You don't need a lot of downloads and I hope you didn't mean 5000 downloads either. The money is there even if you have 100 videos that have been watched. They just won't show you how much you made until you reached 5,000 which honestly I would hope would be around $5- $10 USD. Untiy has it where each user playing shows a maximum of 25 ads per day. If you had 50 people play your game in a week it would show revenue. To be honest though I have no clue why they wait to show you the revenue you have made until you hit 5,000 ads shown. The average ecpm (1000) used to be like $10 bucks but a lot of people been getting less so who knows. Unity is a gamble you have to take.

 

Unity Ads has proven it can make money.

The 5000 ad will probably be so you 'dont hassle us until you are serving a decent amount of ad's' which might then indicate you have a problem.

Otherwise every dev that serves a few ad's will be asking them why they made no money, and when they can see profit etc.

 

It can make money for hugely popular games. For small time developers (which I assume is the bulk of Unity users) it seems to be pointless to use. I have about 10k downloads on Ted's Mower on Android and iOS. I made 25 dollars. Even with a million downloads, I would not make more than 2500 dollars. Financially it just doesn't make sense to use it, it seems.

 

Its hit and miss. I made $0.84 on day 1 of using UnityAds, had barely served 300 ads.

The important thing is to use multiple ad providers, not just one. Why? Have you ever played your game and stopped to watch the ads? Do it over 3-4 days and realise that its the same 4-5 ads played over and over. To make money with Ads, the user has to click the ad. If its the same ad every time, do you think they are going to click it?

 

I am going to try HeyZap. They seem to know what they are doing.

 

HeyZap is quite nice so far, although I havnt had much luck with their mediation stuff. It seems like only heyzap ads get played even though Ive connected a few other providers. Not sure if I missed something obvious... I should really look into that.

 

That's what worries me about Heyzap (or any ad network that has mediation).

They'll always prioritize their own ads. OK, that makes sense of course. They'll want their business too.

The problem is that Heyzap seems to have 100% fill rate. And with that, I mean its often the same 1 - 3 ads showing over and over. There is probably hardly a chance for the other ad networks to show.

And also a reason I like Unity's model of 25 ads per day. At least I see different ads everytime.

Been making mobile games a while, I've noticed same-ish campaigns across every ad network at any given time. If you're looking at mediating ads with Unity's , I recommend mediating with a non-gaming focused network (doesn't work too great with games of course), or at least a non-CPI type ad network, like AdMob or Facebook ads.

 

Agreed MESbill.

I've noticed across the multiple providers I use, they all seem to be the same games/software generally. Still, having 4 providers integrated means I have a chance at showing something unique for at least the first handful of ads.

 

I stopped integrating it halfway through. So many APKs with so many special needs. It is a nightmare.

 

I didnt find it all that messy to have a bunch of providers integrated. It will be a pain in the ass when each sdk gets updated though.

 

You guys bring up some good points. You're right, the reason we have the benchmark at 5000 is because it can be difficult to assess the performance of an app with little data. We simply need more data in most cases. It's common for us to get support requests from users with a couple dozen completed views wondering why they're not seeing revenue.

For games that show a lot of daily impressions and quickly hit the 5000 impression benchmark, we might simply need more time. Attributions don't always happen in the same day as the impression.

In your case, @JamesLeeNZ, an $0.87 eCPM is a pretty rough deal. Usually with that many impressions over that amount of time, you should be seeing more revenue. I'm curious. I'd like to know which countries are driving most of your traffic for your game, and what your completion rate for ad impressions is. Would also like to know on average how many ads each user ends up viewing on a daily basis.

We are working to improve our dashboard so that we can better communicate how an app is performing, even early on. Rather than just posting eCPM values, it would be more helpful to break down the eCPM by top 10 performing countries so that you can see how well impressions in your game are performing in top tier countries while still having fill in lower tier countries (which do tend have a lower CPMs, but fill means potential revenue).

Another figure that's really important to consider, one that might be helpful to add to the dashboard, is the average revenue per daily active user. This will tell you (regardless of how many impressions) how well you are monetizing your user base. Fewer impressions can have a tendency to improve eCPM. At the same time though, if you limit your impressions you may be leaving money on the table. Knowing how much revenue you're generating per user can help determine if showing more ads is positively or negatively affecting your revenue stream.

Lets take your figures for example ($140 after 160,000 impressions), if each of your users were shown all available ads each day, each user would have generated roughly $0.02 on average per day. Granted this is an absolute extreme (assuming each user watches all 25 available ads per day), but it starts to give you an idea of how well you're monetizing your user base. It would be interesting to see what your actual average revenue per daily active user is.

As for showing campaigns more than once, most countries (at least those in the top tiers) have enough active campaigns that users won't see the same ad twice in one day. The same ad is never shown twice in the same hour.

The success of an app does sometimes seem like it's hit or miss, but there are a lot of things you can do to help your app to be successful. It really comes down to implementation. The higher the quality of the app and the more engaging the ad implementation, the more likely it is to perform well. If a game looks good, feels good, and is fun to play, it's likely to be successful. Ads that play a strong, purposeful roll in the design of the game also tend to be successful.

It's also important to keep in mind that an implementation for one game might not be the most effective for another game. If you have a large enough user base, you can implement user segmentation in order to A/B test different monetization implementations to see what works best for your game.

Oscar Clark talks more about design in his article, A Designer's Guide to Using Video Ads. These basic principals are a good starting point, but they can always be expanded upon.

If you want to send me a link to your games, I'd be willing to check them out and offer any suggestions I can.

 

I had to leave UnityADS because definitely is a BIG SCAM disguised as "good fundamentals", fundamentals as explaining @unity-nikkolai.
People always speaks well but these people are always from "Unity tecnology". You will always see explinations (and you never will see the measures in which are based the revenue from UnityADS) AND you never will see the money.
UnityADS only sells air.

Regards,

 

The thing that does slightly concern me are these numbers... ad requests 1219, videos started 319? whats happening there... As for ad settings, every game end an ad is displayed.

Every 1 game show interstitial (unless below conditions)
Every 5 games a non reward video
Every 15 games reward video


Here's a summary so far since I updated my ad providers what 1-2 weeks ago.

Unity Ads
Ad requests: 1219
Videos started: 319
Videos completed: 189
Total Revenue: $0.84
eCPM: $4.54

HeyZap
Impressions: 930
Total Revenue: $1.92
eCPM: $2.06

Adbuddiz
Impressions: 864
Revenue: $2.04
eCPM: $1.08

Top Five Countries for download
United States, 690, 47.16%
United Kingdom, 135, 9.23%
Russia, 118, 8.07%
Brazil, 44, 3.01%
Canada, 39, 2.67%

 

strange... what's about 19 and 20 oct.

 

come back when you have a clue.

 

Hello @arkhament and @JamesLeeNZ

You should try the analitics. Ad Request means; you initialized adnetwork and it request ads from current campaigns of your country. It must do it every time when you initialized on ad network.



As you can see this is my reports. 1000 views 14$. its pretty normal to me. Look at my requests. Its normal with unsuccessfull apps. Remember, not all apps are successfull on market only %1-5. Its not about 1$ up 1$ down. Try not to search for a scapegoat , try making good games.

Regards,

 

Coming from the guy with a cumulative download total of under 6,000 over 4 games I don't think you're in any position to judge a good game.

 

Hello , @JamesLeeNZ

I think misunderstanding here. I am pointing my games for, example of "unsuccessfull games". Although my games are unsuccessfull , they could produce over 1000 views and make 13$. It fits 6-12$ per 1000 views in documentation.

Regards,

 

Hi, @JamesLeeNZ

Thanks for the data. Sorry, but I can't understand how the eCPM is being calculated in your figures :


Unity Ads
Ad requests: 1219
Total Revenue: $0.84
eCPM: $4.54

HeyZap
Impressions: 930
Total Revenue: $1.92
eCPM: $2.06


The HeyZap eCPM looks like right to me, (Revenue/(Impressions/1000)), but why the Unity Ads have a higher eCPM if the revenue is much lower?

Regards,

 

Add requests are irrelevant. It's the videos completed that counts.

 

ecpm is based off predicted earnings based on how many ads served/profit made.

When I first started using Unity Ads, I made 84c after showing very few ads. This gave me a higher ecpm. Of course since then Ive made zero, so my current ecpm is zero (new month... not overly helpful, but it was heading that direction anyway)

 

would you recommend UnityAds?

 

yep. They aint any better/worse than any other ad service.

 

Hello @Mr.Stein ,

I recommend Unity Ads, It speeds up things with new Unity 5 built-in integration. Ads + Analitics problems solved with this workflow. Actually I am using other ad networks too, for displaying in-house ads, although it damages user experience.

There is only one problem left = driving traffic to your app =))

Regards,

 

I understand, thank you very much @ Salazar and @JamesLeeNZ