A game I’ve been working on will be hitting the Microsoft Store soon (demo with an unlock) but the iOS & Android versions to follow will be ad supported.
A long while back I implemented ad support via an abstracted class (don’t we all) but in the ensuing months, I have found Unity Ads to be a less favourable option (sorry Unity) for mostly the following reasons…
Unity does not appear to-do any sort of compliance on ads, putting developers more at risk (I see many complaints of inappropriate ads, even with strict settings)
Unity does not make it easy\obvious to report an inappropriate ad (I understand you have to finish the ad to report it!?)
Banner support is almost non-existent (your mileage may vary on that one)
I’ve been looking at options going forward and am thinking of one of the following approaches.
Implementing new code (which should be fairly easy) and using Admob to mediate ads.
2 Using my existing code and using Unity to mediate ads (it looks like I still need the Admob SDK installed though?)
I would love to hear from others that have been through this as to their preferred approach. I’m sure there are also a multitude of other options.
I have no real issue with the Unity Ads SDK (although it does have some quirks\limits) so am happy to use it in mediated form.
We like to use ironsource for mediation and then add networks such as AdMob, Facebook, Unity, Vungle, etc.
Found that ironsource sdk is way easier to integrate into Unity project than the AdMob one and it also sets up the network required integrations. It is almost 1 click to do it.
Also AdMob only allowed us to load one rewarded ad at a time, which was kind of weird since the other SDKs don’t have that restriction.
Just wanted to chime in and say thanks for the specific feedback. We are always working on improvements.
This is something we have made significant progress on in the past year or so. We are still working on improvements, to prevent inappropriate ads from running and offering tools to block them when they do get through. The creatives that run on our network do go through moderation, and this process is always getting refinements to make sure things don’t slip through. And we have also added a way to filter out specific apps from advertising in your game. This is in addition to the existing category and age filter settings.
Yeah, this is something we need to do better with. I will pass this feedback to our product team.
We are still investing resources into getting banners ramped up. We have seen publishers have success with our banners, but it does depend on a lot of factors, and as you can see from other posts on the forum, it hasn’t been a widespread success yet.
So mediation, and all of the mediation SDKs mentioned, are great options to shore up some of those drawbacks.
Thanks for the response and for being so receptive to my comments, it’s very much appreciated.
I know there is also a thread on (automated?) account locking that has\is frustrating a number of developers by the looks of it. Whilst I know nothing of the actual circumstances behind those stories (therefore it’s not right to comment) from what I see, it appears to occur more on the Unity ads platform than others.
As someone who has spent the best part of three years working on a few projects (with the intention of releasing with ad support) having a safe, robust & fair ad system is absolute top priority & must. They are literally our bread & butter and can make or break projects and months\years of hard work.
I’d love to see Unity improve their ad product as having key gaming services (i.e. analytics, remote config, ads) under one roof can be appealing from a solo dev’s point of view.
Anyway, I’m researching Ironsource for now, but will definitely be keeping an eye on Unity Ads for improvements going forward.