User Acquisition process overview#

App creators who would like to acquire more users can use Unity User Acquisition to place ads in other mobile apps and games. Advertisers using User Acquisition will typically follow a custom journey similar to the following:

Set up a user acquisition campaign#

User acquisition campaigns differ by strategy. Unity supports the following user acquisition campaigns:

• Install campaign (standard): a traditional user acquisition campaign is focused on attaining installs
• Audience Pinpointer campaign: a campaign that focuses on acquiring particular users, such as:
  • Retention: attaining users who are more likely to keep using the app
  • Return on ad spend (ROAS): attaining users who will spend money in your app
  • Event optimization: attaining users who are more likely to engage in certain activities in your app
• Creative testing campaign: a campaign that tests how different ads perform compared to one another

Audience Pinpointer campaigns are only available after advertisers have first run a traditional install campaign. During the install campaign, Unity’s models learn where the ad is most successful.

Make and upload creative packs#

The individual pieces of a mobile ad are called creatives. When advertisers combine the different creatives together to make an ad, it’s called a creative pack. Creative packs are comprised of the following assets:

• Video ad: video ad content
• Playable ad: interactive ad content
• End card: the call to action at the end of an ad, guiding users to the app’s product page

Track installs and post-install events#

To run any user acquisition campaign, advertisers need to track when their ad results in an install. To run an Audience Pinpointer campaign, advertisers also need to track when users perform certain actions after installing the app. These actions are called post-install events.

User Acquisition supports three tracking methods:

• Mobile measurement partners (MMPs)
• Unity Ads SDK
• Server-to-server integration

Set up budgets and payments#

Before starting a campaign, advertisers need to set an Organization budget, which limits how much they want to spend on advertising for their whole organization.

To set a campaign live, advertisers also need to set a Campaign budget, which limits how much of the Organization budget can be spent on a particular campaign.

Advertisers with smaller campaign budgets can then set Daily budgets to limit how much of the Campaign budget can be spent in a single day.

Set user acquisition bids#

Bids are the amount an advertiser is willing to pay to acquire a user by playing an ad. The different campaign types use different kinds of bids.

Configure campaign targeting#

Before setting their campaign live, advertisers can choose to target different kinds of users, locales, devices, and app categories. Targeting isn’t necessary, but it generally improves campaign performance.

Set your campaign live#

When a campaign goes live, it actively begins bidding to place advertisers’ ads in other apps. While live, it will continue to bid until its budget runs out or until the campaign is paused.

Monitor campaign performance#

While a campaign is live, advertisers can monitor its performance in the Unity Ads User Acquisition dashboard. There are a variety of different reporting tools to analyze campaign performance.