User Acquisition process overview

Review the tasks you complete when you create an ad campaign with Unity User Acquisition.

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Last updated 11 hours ago

Use Unity User Acquisition to attract new users by running mobile ad campaigns. Review the following tasks to understand the User Acquisition workflow.

Choose a campaign goal
Upload creative packs
Select countries and set bids
Set budgets and add funds
Configure attribution and post-install event sharing
Refine campaign audience with targeting
Review campaign performance with reports

Choose a campaign goal

Before creating an ad campaign, choose your campaign goal. This goal defines what you want your campaign to prioritize when delivering ads. Unity supports the following campaign goals:

Campaign goal	Description
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS)	Acquire users likely to generate revenue after installing your app.
Event Optimization	Acquire users likely to generate revenue through app engagement.
Cost per Install	Get as many installs as possible within your target budget.
Creative Testing	Test and compare how different ad creatives perform.

After selecting your campaign goal, complete the goal-specific settings for your campaign. For example, for Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) campaigns, decide whether to focus on ad revenue or in-app purchases, and set an optimization window. For Install campaigns, choose between manual or automated bidding. To learn more about each goal and its settings, refer to Choosing a campaign goal. Some goals, such as ROAS and Retention, require you to accumulate campaign data at launch. Refer to the Introduction to ROAS campaigns documentation for details.

Upload creative packs

After selecting a campaign goal, create the content for your ad campaign. Creatives are the individual assets of a mobile ad, such as video, playable, and end card content. A group of creatives, known as a creative pack, forms the ad that users view. Refer to the Introduction to User Acquisition creatives for more information. When you upload creative packs to the dashboard, they enter a moderation queue. All creatives go through a human moderation process to ensure they meet Unity's advertising content policies. For details about the moderation checks and how to view your moderation status, refer to the Introduction to creative moderation.

Select countries and set bids

After uploading creative packs, choose which countries to target in your campaign. For new campaigns, the recommended best practice is to start with one or two countries. For each selected country, set a bid amount. The bid is the amount you're willing to spend to show your ad to a user. Bid types depend on your campaign goal. For example, Install campaigns with manual bidding require you to set a bid amount for each country. ROAS campaigns require you to set a target ROAS, and the campaign automatically adjusts bids to meet your goal. For information about bid types, refer to the Introduction to User Acquisition bidding.

Set budgets and add funds

Before launching your campaign, set a campaign budget to limit the total amount your campaign can spend, and a daily budget to limit how much it can spend each day. For more information about each budget type, refer to the Introduction to user acquisition budgets. To add advertising funds, increase your organization budget in the dashboard. Refer to Add funds to your organization for instructions. To run a user acquisition campaign, you need to track when an ad results in an install. You can pass this information to Unity using postbacks called attribution links. These URLs let Unity know if an install occurred after someone viewed your ad. Refer to the Campaign attribution fundamentals documentation to learn more. Some campaigns also require information about user actions after installation, known as post-install event data. Refer to the Post-install event data-sharing documentation for details about the requirements for each campaign. You can share attribution and post-install event data with Unity by either working with a Mobile Measurement Partner (MMP) or setting up a custom server-to-server integration. If you use an MMP, integrate it with your campaign to generate postback URLs. Refer to the Partner integration for instructions specific to your chosen partner. For information about setting up a custom server-to-server integration, refer to the Custom integration documentation.

Refine campaign audience with targeting

You can optionally refine your campaign audience using targeting options. You can target app sources, locales, devices, and app categories. Refining your audience can help your ads reach users who are more likely to have interest in your app, which might improve campaign performance. Refer to the Campaign targeting documentation to learn more about the supported targeting options.

Review campaign performance with reports

After your campaign goes live, you can monitor its performance in the User Acquisition dashboard. Use the Performance dashboard for creative-level reporting and Creative insights. To build custom reports, use Report Builder. Refer to the Reporting and analytics documentation for details about each reporting option.

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