Getting Started with Ad Revenue: Unity Level Play
Welcome back to the 3rd installment of the Getting Started with Mobile Ad Revenue. After covering Google’s Admob last week this week we deep dive into Unity’s Level Play.
Level Play was built by Ironsource which was in turn acquired by Unity in 2022, which now operates the platform. Just like last time we will start with the pros and cons of Unity Level Play then move on to how to set up your apps and how to read and optimize your data.
Pros:
Best dashboard for data manipulation and data management
Good Rewarded Video and interstitial eCPM
Great creative review tool for checking the ads that run in your inventory
In-house ad placement game designers can give you ad design tips (if you’re large enough)
Easy to integrate if you build your game or app in Unity
Cons:
Banner preformance is frequently higher on other mediation platforms
Cross-promotion tool is a paid extra
UA performance from 1st party-owned networks can be better on other platforms
Video length and end cards on ironsource and Unity are very aggressive which can harm retention
Basics
Once you’ve been approved for your LevelPlay account you can open your dashboard. Below you can see what it looks like. The most important parts of the dashboard are; Performance, User Activity, and Mediation tabs. I’ve highlighted all the most important tabs below and we’ll go through all later on.
Setting up your App
To first set up an app in LevelPlay, you need to go to LevelPlay → Apps → “+” . You need to input your Google Play or App Store link in the first field. If your app is not live you can add the link later but you will need to add it before you can start earning revenue. If your app is not targeted towards children select this option under COPPA. If you don’t select this your revenue will be impacted. Also you need to select “Do not restrict the use of user data” under the U.S Privacy Laws secteion or your eCPMs will be heavily reduced as targeting will be removed.
Once you’ve set up your app in Level Play you’ll see it in the top menu tab. If you have several apps or games you need to be careful that you’re choosing the right app when you’re setting up your networks and waterfall placements.
Setting up Ad Units
To set up your ad units, you need to start by going to Level Play → Setup → Adunits. Here, you can control your ad delivery timers and things like rewards and cool-down periods.
Generally, I’d recommend setting Banners on a 15-second refresh rate under “Banners.” 15 seconds gives you a high amount of banner IMP/DAU and generally doesn’t cause a drop in retention. You can start at 15 seconds and then test 10 seconds later to see the impact on revenue and retention.
Also, under instances, you can select “Interstitials” and “Rewarded” to edit your video ad units. Under “advanced settings,” you can set things like caps per day, per hour, and pace the delivery of the video ads.
Generally, if you’re looking to scale a game or app, I would recommend never touching these settings here and setting up your own serving logic on your backend. This gives you way more flexibility and targetability. Likewise, with setting up the rewarded amounts under the “Rewarded” ad settings – just leave this alone and use a solid backend setup, as playing around with amounts here will make everything way more complicated than it has to be.
Setting up Networks
Now that you’ve setup your app and set your ad delivery settings you’re ready to start setting up the ad networks. This description assumes that you’ve integrated the SDKs correctly into your app or game. You’ll need to go to LevelPlay → Setup → Networks. If you estimate that your ad revenue will be between $0-1k/day you’ll need 4-5 networks. In LevelPlay I’d recommend to start with these networks:
Banners:
Google
Meta (only good on Android)
Ironsource + iS exchange (comes as standard)
DTx
Amazon (if you can get access this is amazing)
Video:
Applovin
Unity
Mintegral
Google
Meta (Only good on Android)
List is up to date as of publishing but you can always check the Appflyer Preformance Index to see what networks will work best for you.
To set up the networks you will need to make accounts individually with each network and follow the setup instructions under “Setup”. It’s different for each network but you’ll figure it out! Don’t forget to add all networks lines under the app-ads.txt file on your website too.
Setting up header bidders and waterfalls
To start setting up your mediation you need to start by setting up the header bidders. You’ll need to go to Level Play → Instances → Bidding. Make sure that you’ve selected the correct app on top (I’ve made this mistake too many times so don’t be like me).
After you’ve setup all your networks they will appear here under “instances”. If you’re a beginner generally is a good idea to try to keep as many networks as possible on Bidding. Here you need to select your network click “add instance” and input you “App ID” and “Placement IDs” from the various networks. You will get these codes from the 3rd party networks dashboards that you’ve integrated into your app.
Some networks will have different codes, for example Applovin has an SDK key you instead of an app ID. When you’re done click save.
Now when you go to LevelPlay → Management → Mediation and select your app you should see the bidding networks at the top.
To setup the non-bidding networks you need to follow the same steps under instances. The main difference is that you need to setup individual placements at various price points. Make sure that your price points in the 3rd party networks like Applovin are the same price levels as what you put into LevelPlay.
If they’re not aligned you’ll be in trouble – in the best case your revenue reporting will be off and in the worst case scenario you will lose alot of money. Imagine if you put a $1 placement in a $100 instance slot… that’s how you lose alot of money.
If you’re working with non-bidding instances on LevelPlay make sure you set them up with a competing network at interlocking price points to maximize ad revenue. As of writing this the main non-bidding networks on LevelPlay are Applovin, Google Ad Manager Networks, and Digital Turbine. Most of these networks will be on bidding soon so hopefully you don’t have to set this up as it’s very time consuming. Remember that any changes done here will take about 20-40 minutes to propagate inside of your application. So if you make a mistake you’ll have 20-40 min to correct it before it goes live.
Interpreting data in Level Play
LevelPlay is great for data visualization. Here we will go through some of the main things that you should check on a daily or weekly basis depending on your ad revenue.
Performance Metrics
Preformance → Select App → Rewarded / Intersitial / Banner → Revenue / Impressions / eCPM / Fillrate
Under performance you can toggle between revenue, impression and eCPM. On the side you can use the break by button to split the data by ad source which breaks the revenue down by the networks you’re working with. Depending on your daily revenue you should check here daily if you see any drops or deviations from the norm.
User Activity Metrics
LevelPlay → User Activity → Rewarded / Intersitial / Banner → DEU / ARPDAU / Engagement Rate / IMP/DAU
Here is where you’ll find the ad metrics that are essential to know if your user base is engaging with your ads. If you’re an avid reader of this series you will know that we went through the basics of ad metrics in part 1. I’ll just cover the ad thermonology that’s unique for LevelPlay:
DEU – Daily Engaged User (if a user sees an ad there an engaged user)
ARPDAEU – Average Revenue per Engaged User
Engagement Rate – Percentage of userbase that sees ads
IMP/DEU – Impressions per Engaged User
You can also access real time pivot which is the best and most detailed tool for manipulating data under LevelPlay → Mediation → Real Time Pivot. This tool is a bit more complex to use so I’d recommend to use it only if really need to do a deep dive on your metrics. To get comfortable with this tool you just have to use it just like you do Tableau or any other tool like that.
Optimizing your inventory in Level Play
To look at how your networks and placements are preforming you need to go LevelPlay → Mangement → Mediation → Select App. You’ll see the important areas highlighted in red below.
Once you’ve setup your ad networks you can go here to read your mediation data and start maximizing your ad revenue. To begin you’ll need setup an AB test by clicking “Start test” and naming your test. Click “B” group at the top right and select a date range – you never want to include the current day in this time period as the revenue data is incomplete. I like to work in yesterday minus three days. Once you have the date range setup the two columns that are the most important for your optimization are the SoV and SOW metrics.
SoV – Share of Voice is the percentage of total impressions the bidder or placement fills
SoW – Share of Wallet is the percentage of total revenue the bidder or placement makes up
If you remember back to our 101 course you want networks to make atleast 5% of SoW and ideally not more than 40%. If a network is below 5% replace the network and try something new. This is how you should asses the bidder networks. This is quite easy to monitor so no need to check this even on a weekly basis.
Now lets move on to how to optimize the the non-bidding networks. The main non–bidding network on LevelPlay you will use is Applovin. After you’ve set your date range in the “B” test group you’ll need to scroll down and look under “Non-bidding” networks. You’ll see the names of each of the price floors and here again the the most important metrics are SoV and SoW. For non-bidding pricepoints (called instances on LevelPlay) you want each price point to generate atleast 1% SoV and/or 1% SoW. A SoW above 1% means that the corresponding network can pay a higher price for your inventory and you should add a higher price point. Likewise if a network has below 1% SoW that means the price needs to be reduced. In the example below you can see that the $9 price point needs to be removed and recreated at a lower price point. Likewise the $25, $15 and $9 price points can be left but new higher price points above it can be added. I generally would recommend to increase or reduce price points by 25% to create new ones.
Once you’ve set all new price points in the “B” group you will need to leave this for 5-10 days to let the test groups compete against each other. Check the results under LevelPlay → Mediaiton → AB tests.
Pro tips in LevelPlay
LevelPlay Creative Review for UA Creative Inspiration
LevelPlay’s Creative Review tool, which is found under LevelPlay → Ad Quality → Analysis, contains the CTR and churn rate of all the creatives that are shown in your app. UA teams love using this data as inspiration for their own creative production. Remember that your developers need to activate this tool when setting up LevelPlay.
Google Ad Manager through the Admob SDK
In LevelPlay you don’t need to add the Google Ad Manager SDK to your app to use it. If you have the Admob SDK you can run GAM placements through the Admob SDK for quick addition of extra demand without the need to add a new SDK.
That sums it up for this introduction to LevelPlay Mediation. Next time, I’ll introduce you to Applovin MAX. If you’re looking for more advanced tips on the world of Mobile Ad Monetization, sign up for my newsletter.
If you’re looking for more general UA, Game Design, and Ad Monetization tips, you should subscribe to the 2.5 Gamers podcast.
