Choosing a campaign goal

Review the available ad campaign goals with Unity Ads User Acquisition.

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Last updated 2 months ago

Different advertising campaigns have different goals. By default, campaigns seek to generate installs. Optimized campaign goals acquire particular kinds of users. For example, you can create campaigns with goals like the following:

Target users who are more likely to engage with your app for seven or more days.
Target users who are more likely to generate revenue by watching ads or making in-app purchases.

Choosing the right goal is the first step in creating an effective campaign.

Install campaigns

Install or Cost-per-install (CPI) campaigns are the default User Acquisition campaign. This campaign's goal is to generate as many installs for your app as possible.

Optimized campaign goals

Optimized campaigns generate installs in specific user segments. With Unity Ads, there are two categories of optimized campaign goals:

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Acquire users who are more likely to generate revenue.
Event: Acquire users who are more likely to reach specific milestones in your app.

All optimized campaign goals require post-install event data. You can share this data with your campaign with an integrated mobile measurement partner (MMP) or with a custom server-to-server integration. The recommended best practice is to share data with an MMP because custom server integrations are error-prone and Unity can provide only minimal support when errors occur. Refer to the following sections for more information about the optimization types you can choose within each kind of optimized campaign goal.

Return on Ad Spend

With ROAS campaigns, you choose a ROAS target, which is the percent of your ad spend you want to earn back from user-generated revenue. When you choose Return on Ad Spend as your goal during campaign setup, you choose one of the following optimization types:

In-app purchase (IAP): Acquire users who generate revenue by making purchases in your app.
Ad revenue: Acquire users who generate revenue by watching ads in your app.
Hybrid: Acquire users who generate revenue by both making purchases and watching ads in your app.

Use ROAS as your campaign goal when you want to acquire high-quality users and keep the focus on your targeted return on investment. To learn more, refer to the ROAS campaign documentation.

Event optimization

With Event campaigns, you choose a specific milestone or engagement you want users to complete in your app. When you choose Event optimization as your goal during campaign setup, you choose one of the following optimization types:

Level Complete: Acquire users who reach a specific level or completion milestone in your app.
Payer: Acquire users who are more likely to make purchases in your app.
Note
Unlike IAP ROAS campaigns, Payer campaigns don't optimize for a target ROAS goal.
Retention: Acquire users who are more likely to continue using your app.

Use Event optimization as your campaign goal when you want to acquire high-quality users who engage with your app in a particular way. To learn more, refer to the Event optimization campaign documentation.

Creative testing campaigns

The goal of a Creative testing campaign is to give each creative pack a fair opportunity to serve impressions so you can compare their performance. Unity's models balance impression delivery across all the creative packs in the campaign, but the number of impressions for each pack may not be exactly the same. Use this campaign goal type when you want to compare how different creative packs perform with the same audience so you can improve your user acquisition strategy. To learn more, refer to the Creative testing campaign documentation.

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