It is widely known that the ad content your players see in-game has a major impact on their perception of you as a studio and your ability to retain them as engaged and committed players, so you need to make sure you have close control over what they are seeing.
This is why we are delighted to share with you our latest feature: Ad Controls. In the Monetization Dashboard you will be able to manage, review, and optimize all the ad content shown in your game so you can have transparency and control of your brand at all times.
How it works
Navigating the fine balance between monetizing your game and maintaining a strong brand and powerful player experience can be difficult, and it can lead to some tough choices.
Many studios can only make reactive decisions, blocking specific ads once they are reported by their players. This means the damage could already be done to the brand’s reputation, but you also don’t want to be banning ads without due process and losing out on critical revenue.
Ad Controls solves this problem by allowing you to manage the ad content in your games by giving you the control to not only block advertisers but also individual creatives that do not meet your brand standards. In order to make informed blocking decisions, Ad Controls provides increased transparency by enabling you to preview each ad that is shown in your game.
Here is how it works:
Search and review
In the Ad Review tab you can quickly find and evaluate ads. Search, sort, and filtering options allow you to review ad content by impressions, revenue, clicks, click-through-rate, date, platform, categories, countries, and ad type.
Preview
Get eyes on all ads running in your game with a full screen preview of creatives and creative packs. You can preview playables, end cards, and entire videos to have full transparency into the content that is shown to your players.
Additional metadata such as ad type, category, destination URL, and store ID is provided so you can identify creatives that your users have submitted feedback on.
Block and unblock
You can block unwanted individual creatives or multiple creatives at once by using multi select capabilities. A dedicated gallery view of blocked ads also allows you to easily manage your block list.
Ad Controls can be used at the organizational level or the project level in the Monetization Dashboard. This gives you the ability to manage ad content for your entire studio or each of your games individually.
Big Fish’s success with Ad Controls
With a diverse portfolio of successful titles like EverMerge, Fairway Solitaire, Cooking Craze, and Big Fish Casino, Big Fish Games has long been a force in the mobile and PC gaming industry.
Prior to adopting Ad Controls, they would simply block an ad first upon receiving any reports and assess the impact later, leading to some potentially poor decisions. Since they have adopted Unity’s Ad Controls feature, they have had much more control and insight into their ads.
Kelly Kang, Sr. Director of Ad Monetization, Aristocrat Digital (Big Fish Games, Product Madness), said: “We use this feature very often. Every time we receive feedback from users that would warrant a block, or see the need to block certain ads, we use the revenue loss insights from the feature to determine what the revenue impact will be before we decide to block it.
“We’re also able to escalate ad quality issues quickly now, and as a result we’re blocking less and preserving more revenue while still putting users first.”
As a part of our commitment to giving games increased transparency and control over their monetization strategy, in 2022 we will continue to expand your ability to manage and optimize the ad content that runs in your games.
Protecting your brand perception while seizing revenue opportunities is crucial to running a successful game. Visit Unity Documentation to learn how to start using Ad Controls today to provide the best ad experience for your players.
