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User Acquisition

Introduction to campaign targeting

Learn about the targeting options for Unity User Acquisition campaigns.
Read time 5 minutesLast updated 11 hours ago
Targeting allows you to narrow the audience of your ad campaign. This article introduces Unity's targeting options:

App targeting

Use source app IDs to allow or block apps to bid on. To locate source app IDs, use Unity's Report Builder to analyze the geo-level of each source your campaigns have reached. Pinpoint the best performing sources to allowlist, and the poorest performing sources to blocklist.
Note
Sources can only be identified by their abstracted IDs; Unity can't give out source IDs for specific apps.
Important
Source app IDs are case-sensitive.

App targeting allowlist

Adding Source App IDs to your allowlist restricts bidding to those specified apps. Note that limiting sources limits the scale of your campaign, so restricting your allowlist too much can negatively impact the campaign's performance.

App targeting blocklist

Adding Source App IDs to your blocklist excludes those specified apps from receiving bids.

App category targeting

Targeting app categories allows you to accomplish several user acquisition goals, such as:
  • Deliver your ad to users already engaging with apps like yours
  • Deliver your ad to users in high-performing app categories
  • Avoid delivering your ad to users in lower-performing app categories
Similar to App targeting, this feature allows you to allow- or blocklist. Instead of allowing and blocking individual apps, you allow and block whole app categories, allowing you to run a highly targeted campaign with minimal configuration. When you open the category targeting settings, there are three groups of app categories to choose from:
  • Game categories: Apps with Game as the primary category, and one of the provided subcategories. For example, apps with the primary category Game and the subcategory Action.
  • Other categories: Apps with a primary category other than games. For example, apps with the primary category Finance.
  • Unknown/Null: apps for which Unity has no category data or the data is recorded as Null.

App Category targeting options

Configure App Category targeting in the following ways:
  • Target all categories: your campaign targets all apps, regardless of category information
  • Select categories: you choose which app categories your campaign will target
  • Exclude categories: your campaign targets all categories other than those you choose
Your campaign uses Target all categories by default. Review the following tables to understand how the other targeting options, Select categories and Exclude categories, function in your campaign.
Refer to this table for examples of using Select categories to allow-list app categories you want to target in you campaign:
Note
When choosing a category from the Game categories group, you are selecting a subcategory. The primary category for any selection in this list is Game.

Categories selected by Advertiser

Apps targeted by the campaign

Apps not targeted by the campaign

Game subcategory: PuzzleAll apps with the primary category Game and the subcategory Puzzle
  • Any apps without the primary category Game
  • Any apps with a subcategory other than Puzzle
  • Any apps with no subcategory information
  • Any apps with no primary category information
Game subcategory: Puzzle Unknown/Null
  • All apps with the primary category Game and the subcategory Puzzle
  • All apps for which Unity has no category information
  • Apps with the primary category Game but a different subcategory than Puzzle
  • Any apps with a primary category other than Game
  • Any apps with a subcategory other than Puzzle

Device targeting

Use Device targeting when you want to target or block users with particular mobile devices in your campaign.

Source bidding

Use Source bidding to granularly target and price apps (sources) within your ad campaign, so that you can bid higher or lower on individual sources per geo. Source bidding gives you the self-service tools to bid against individual source app IDs on a per-country basis. The Source Bidding feature values each source app individually, based on its targeted locations and quality of users. The ability to bid on sources individually, instead of placing a single bid across all sources within a given targeted location, creates greater efficiency within your ad spend.
  • Granular optimization: Instead of applying the same price across all sources within a targeted geographic location or larger app targeting list, make intelligent optimizations with granular bids for individual sources in each target location.
  • Targeting control: Increase control of how much you spend per source with the ability to make changes.
  • Self-service: The simplified interface allows you to set up and optimize campaigns on the Unity User Acquisition dashboard without specialized support.
Important
Source bidding is available for static, CPI campaigns only.
Each source app has an associated source app ID. Source bidding lets you place bids against the source app IDs you want to target, per country, by modifying and uploading a spreadsheet in the User Acquisition dashboard.To locate source app IDs, use Unity's Report Builder to analyze the geo-level of each source your campaigns have reached. Pinpoint the best performing sources and use their IDs to target for Source Bidding.
Note
Sources might only be identified by their abstracted IDs; Unity can't give out source IDs for specific apps.

Source bid templates

To specify your source bids, open the exported template and populate the fields according to the following guidelines:

Column

Description

Example values

Country code
The two-letter (Alpha 2) ISO country code representing the source's geographic location. Note: Using three-letter country codes causes an error.
  • US
  • CA
  • KR
Source ID
The Unity identifier for the source app, the 
source_app_id
. Note: This is a 12-character, alphanumeric, case-sensitive value.
9g74cAw7WM1L
Bid
The amount you are willing to spend in U.S. currency. This field supports up to three decimal places.
  • 5
  • 5.1
  • 5.12
  • 5.123
Important
Ensure you save the template as an XLSX file.
Note
If you already entered standard bids in the Countries & Bids section, those bids act as default bids for any sources that aren't explicitly defined in your spreadsheet. You can also run a campaign that consists of source bids only.

Source bid errors

The Source bids section of the campaign menu details a Any errors when importing your spreadsheet. Some examples of potential errors include:
  • Missing column headers
  • Blank values
  • Incorrect values (such as three-character country codes, or bids with the wrong number of decimal places)
  • Unpopulated fields from a row
  • Mismatch in format. For example, 
    source_app_ID
    is a 12-character alphanumeric case-sensitive string.
If there are multiple errors, a detailed explanation of all errors appears: Fix the issues in your spreadsheet, and re-import the file.

Updating source bids

To update source bids, revise your spreadsheet and re-import it. As a validation check, your previous bids appear crossed out for you to preview. For additional validation, an alert appears if a bid changes by a large amount.

App targeting and Source Bidding

Allowlisting and Source Bidding are separate campaign targeting tactics. You must clear any allowlisted apps from a campaign to use source bids in that campaign. You can still use app blocking (blocklisting) in tandem with Source Bidding.

Regional targeting

To granularly target or exclude specific states within a country included in your campaign, use Regional targeting.