In this blog post, we analyze the main discussion points from the video above and highlight key takeaways. Roman Garbar from Tenjin asks questions about Unity ROAS campaigns, and Céline Fraimund from Unity provides insightful answers.

About our guest speaker Céline Fraimund:
She is a Client Partner at Unity, focusing on assisting EMEA advertisers in maximizing the effectiveness of their Unity user-acquisition campaigns, particularly with hyper-casual clients in the region.

Read the full blog post to learn about:

• Types of Unity Campaigns
• Setting up Unity ROAS campaigns for advertisers
• Best practices for running Unity Ad Revenue ROAS and Hybrid ROAS campaigns

…and much more.

Let’s get started!

About ROAS Campaigns

What are ROAS Campaigns in a nutshell?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 1:50 – 2:34)

Roman: ROAS campaigns are when a developer sends revenue (IAP or advertising) to an ad network and the ad network optimizes the performance of their advertising campaigns.

Celine: Yes, exactly. Unity calls these campaigns “Audience Pinpointer (APP) Campaigns,” and these campaigns drill-down to the user level. They try to find the user that has the highest predicted value for your game. The algorithm does most of the manual work for you and tries to rebid on the users it thinks would be the most valuable for your game.

Why are we talking about ROAS campaigns?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 0:58 – 1:50)

YOMI Studio has been our (Tenjin’s) typical customer for ROAS campaigns. Here are some pointers on YOMI Studio:

• Company Size: Small and medium-sized enterprises
• Based out of Vietnam
• Target Campaign Country: USA
• UA team size: 1 (Co-Founder)
• Focus genre: Casual mobile games

You can learn more about how YOMI Studio used Ad Revenue Callbacks and ROAS campaigns to increase their ARPDAU by 60% here.

About Unity ROAS Campaigns

What types of campaigns are available in Unity?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 3:14 – 4:34)

The above graphic features the campaigns Unity says you should start with before moving forward to the Audience Pinpointer Campaigns. Source: Unity.

What are the Creative testing and Install campaigns?

• Creative testing campaigns (static bidding): This type of campaign allows you to A/B test your creatives and understand which ones have the best conversion rates. You can use that information to start with the creatives (such as videos, playables, etc) that are giving you the best performance. These campaigns are available on both iOS and Android.
• Install campaigns (static & auto bidding): For this type of campaign you need your tracking links and creatives. Once you have your budget set up, you can start running this type of campaign pretty quickly.

The image above features “Audience Pinpointer (APP) campaigns.” These types of campaigns require you to be sending in your post-install data i.e. your IAP, ad revenue, retention data, or any specific event data. The link between the starter campaigns mentioned above and these types of campaigns is that to unlock your ROAS or custom events campaigns, you need to start with your install campaigns. Source: Unity.

How long do I need to run install campaigns to be able to switch to ROAS campaigns with Unity?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 4:43 – 5:33)

You would need to pass an “eligibility threshold” – this means that within the threshold of your CPI campaign, we (Unity) would need to get a sufficient amount of installs, and a sufficient amount of post-install data.

The quickest ROAS campaign you can run is the D0 ROAS Ad Revenue Campaign for which you need around 200 installs for one geography. And then we (Unity) would be able to open up the campaign within 48 hours of receiving the data.

How difficult is it for advertisers to set up Unity ROAS campaigns? Are they available by default?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 5:35 – 6:52)

Our (Unity’s) dashboard is 100% self-service, which means everything can be accessed and set up directly by the advertiser.

Below is a step-by-step process advertisers can follow to set up their Unity ROAS campaigns:

Step 1: Ensure that all of the data from your MMP is enabled to pass to Unity, or in other words your Ad Revenue callbacks have been set up correctly (here’s Tenjin’s 6-step process to set this up)

Step 2: Start running Unity CPI campaigns

Step 3: Once you’ve reached the “eligibility threshold” of CPI, you will see the ROAS campaigns unlocked on the Unity dashboard

Step 4: Then, all you need to do is create your ROAS campaigns by adding your budget, creatives, and setting your maximum bid and the target ROAS you want to achieve

For successful Unity ROAS campaigns, should developers provide Unity with only Unity data, or data from all ad networks?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 6:53 – 7:42)

Currently our (Unity’s) model only focuses on Unity- attributed data. But there is no harm in sending us all of the data that you have, there is no limitation on this.

Can you tell us more about the D0 to D7 Ad Revenue ROAS Campaigns?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 7:54 – 9:55)

We (Unity) first launched D7 Ad Revenue ROAS campaigns and quickly learned about the demand for D0 campaigns as well. We now provide the option to have D0 to D7 Ad Revenue ROAS Campaigns to give advertisers more options to fit their user-acquisition strategy.

The important thing to keep in mind is that you would reach the eligibility for the D0 campaigns much quicker. So if you really want to move to a ROAS campaign as soon as possible, you can start D0 ROAS campaigns faster, and once you reach the eligibility for D7 you can open that.

We (Unity) don’t, however, recommend having both D0 and D7 ROAS campaigns open for the same geography at the same time. But if you want to test different geographies and different monetization strategies, you have the freedom to run both D0 and D7 ROAS campaigns.

Do you have any best practices you can recommend for bids for Unity ROAS Campaigns?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 9:56 – 11:13)

Usually the Unity dashboard will give you a suggestion for bids. For ROAS campaigns, the two things to keep in mind are the maximum bid and your target ROAS goal.

Our recommendation for the maximum bid is to have 2-3 times the average CPI you see on the campaign. We do recommend to be quite large with the maximum bid because you want to avoid the maximum bid from capping the raw bid that would be used in the auction. That would stop you from reaching certain high value users.

As for target ROAS, you want to make sure it matches the last 30 days ROAS you were observing on your CPI campaign. Sometimes we notice a discrepancy between that data and the target ROAS of a user. However, we believe that setting a target ROAS to match the data with your last 30 days ROAS is most efficient.

Are Unity Hybrid ROAS campaigns the same as the Ad Revenue ROAS Campaigns in terms of bids?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 11:30-12:17)

The Hybrid ROAS campaigns target both IAP and Ad Revenue data. For these campaigns, you would still set just one maximum bid and one target ROAS.

We (Unity) give the same recommendation for setting the maximum bid for these campaigns as we gave for the ROAS campaigns above.

For target ROAS, however, we see that usually IAP ROAS targets are a bit lower than Ad Revenue ROAS targets. In this case, it’s good to compromise between a target you would have for ad-based revenue and IAP-based revenue.

What is the recommended budget for both Ad Revenue ROAS and Hybrid ROAS Campaigns?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 12:19 – 13:29)

For any type of campaign, our optimal recommended budget is usually around $500 daily per geography. We (Unity) do understand that it can be a high amount, specially for a first campaign. So you can go a little bit lower than that. We wouldn’t, however, recommend going below $100 because you need to have enough room within your budget for the algorithm to find different types of users.

We do see that campaigns with a higher scale usually lead to ROAS that is a lot more stable, and a lot more accurate.

Are there any other best practices for any type of campaign that we haven’t talked about?

(This answer is featured in the video between the timestamps 13.30 – 14:50)

Don’t over optimize your campaigns

For ROAS campaigns, for example, you want to give it 2-3 days between optimizations. Once you update either your maximum bid or your target ROAS, you should see a full cohort with the changes before making another change.

For Hybrid campaigns, or single IAP, or single Ad Revenue ROAS campaigns that are on D7 – we usually recommend giving it around a week between optimizations. Sometimes we see users change it everyday, and this makes it hard for the model to apply and to see the real effects of each change.

Run one creative per $100 of daily cap

It is important to keep in mind the amount of creatives you have running at any given time. Our rule of thumb is to have one creative running per $100 of daily cap. This helps you make sure all of your creatives can be explored properly and can be shown to the right audience.