Hey, simple question: I noticed it is possible to start videos muted through Unity Ads dashboard settings, but is there any downsides if I mute the ads by default? A few players have complained about loud ads when they think they’re playing silent (in fact they probably just did not adjust the media volume on the device), so to avoid mishaps like that I thought about muting the ads by default. Any impact whatsoever on revenue etc. if I do that? 
I am NOT sure about the revenue impact but I did mute the audio a long time ago for the same reason, there was no perceivable impact on revenue. I figured whatever impact I might have is worth it.
It would be great if someone from Unity confirms this.
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I don’t have any numbers right now to back the previous claim - and it’s laborous / difficult to get confident results about this without a/b -testing it with some publishers.
I can easily check if this setting is on for a publisher and compare the performance to other games, but I can’t off the bat confirm how and when this setting has been adjusted and different games perform differently - this also changes a lot seasonally.
The hard part is aggregating stats while keeping in mind the fact that the setting might have changed at some point - and doing this analysis for enough games out there to yield good results. There’s not enough data for that for the moment. The player devices might also be muted or silent - which adds to the margin of error.
My best recommendation right now is to try it on a game for a week and see how the results are. It would be great if you report your findings here as well.
haha… this is scary!
It seems like Unity Ads is a huge hairy monster with a life of its own and everything we want to know about it should be experimented!
C’mon guys, its it a policy decisions keep the revenue constant or vary with muted/unmuted ads?
This leads to another question, does the revenue also vary with the user’s mobile volume at the time of watching the Ad?
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I was just googling for this, “unity ads too loud”…
Its definitely super annoying… feels like when game volume is very low,
then suddenly video ad is playing as if its full volume…
When I’m playing games with Unity ads, and an ad plays, I just take off my headphones and set the device aside for 30s. I don’t want to have my ears blasted, and watching an ad without sound is too boring. It’s definitely pissing people off, and I imagine even for people who do still watch the ads it’s having a negative effect - creating a reverse Pavlovian reaction where people form negative association with the games featured in the ads because the ads are causing them physical pain.
Why not just respect players and have the ads play at a non-deafening volume level? Even if blasting people’s ears did improve revenue slightly, which I’m very doubtful about, do we really need to lower ourselves to that level? And even if it does statistically increase revenue, you’re still forming a long term association between the game engine, the game from which the ads are playing, and the games being advertised, with physical pain.
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I don’t understand how this has been an issue for so long (still is in 2022), we should be able to just provide the ads engine an audio mixer to go through. Or some way game volume can also tones down the ads. The answer has always just been “mute it at it’s source (dashboard)” Yet… Other messages we get are “make the ads PART of your game.” These feel mutually exclusive.
I apologize if a solution has been provided recently, it didn’t show up in search results, this did.
Can you turn the game volume up to as loud as the ads, then at least the user will turn the volume down and ad should play at same volume?