Testing ADS In test flight?

Unity Services
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1

Are you allowed to watch ads in your game if you built straight to your device or testing off of testflight?

2

Hello @qiveal ,

The short answer is no. It is okay to see your own ads just a few times in production. However, if you click your ads by yourself too many times our system might detect that it is fraudulent behavior.

Our system automatically detects unusual behavior. That might be related to unusual installing patterns, or could be caused by watching ads by yourself and installing your app.

FYI, Here is our invalid activity policy. Invalid Activity Policy

3

How about when my game is out on a public app store, and I am just acting like a normal player, playing and watching the ads?

4

Well, that explains why I got in trouble before… So I have devices who have played the game quite a bit in test flight before that happened. Now they are playing it like normal players on the App Store is this okay?

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They are real players.

6

Hi @Unity_Jae

Thanks for the info.

Following on from your reply, I’m on the cusp of releasing my first Unity Ads supported game and wondered if you would be able to help with the the following questions please.

  1. Are ‘live’ ads allowed during the app stores review process? The policy doesn’t make this clear. I assume yes, as surely Google & Apple would surely need to see some ads to determine if they suit the app rating.

  2. Would it be against policy to ask friends & family to play the game once live (with live ads) to help spread word around? A number live local to me and I’m concerned this would be classed as fraudulent activity.

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@PeachyPixels Normally, you don’t have to worry too much, and both cases are fine. If you are asking your friends that play the ads all the time, that could be a problem. But just once, it should be fine.

However, @qiveal please don’t try to see ads too many times in your game. That definitely violates our policy below,

  • manually clicking on Ads by publisher’s employees or agents outside of limited, customary Application testing, or otherwise installs or other Ad engagement that appear to be coming from the publisher themselves;

You don’t have to worry too much about what-if ads are now showing properly. Your users will report when they are facing some problems. If you have checked ads are working fine when releasing the game, please don’t try to see ads like a normal player.

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Thanks for the info @Unity_Jae

Apologies, my use of the word once was a little confusing there. I meant after the game goes live, not playing once :slight_smile:

I was trying to ascertain if it’s ok to share my game (to friends and family) on social media to try and spread word. A number of them live local to me (and assume some of their friends & family do as well) and am concerned that’s a red flag for fraud detection.

Sending them all (remove ads) promo codes is not really viable.

For us indie devs, using friend & family to spread the word is extremely helpful, so it would be a shame if this is going to cause an issue. They are after all genuine ad impressions.

On a side note, maybe the invalid use policy could be updated with these edge cases? I understand the need to keep fraud detection methods private, but there are edges cases (like friends & family) that are important to understand.

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