The "Unity Ad" Scam?

Unity Services
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//Warning, long post

So i am making a mobile game with the awesome Unity Software. I have been coding for about 20 years. And i am pretty new to Unity (about a year experience).

So i thought to myself…how can i possible get some pay for the months i spent on this game since everyone seems to think everything should be free. Ads is the answer…i thought.

Did a lot of research. Thought Unity Ads looked pretty good. There is a HUGE intrusive video ad that you have to place in your game. That will definitely lower the gaming experience. But…the game is free right?

So i read on a lot of forums and on Unity Ads website. And i have come to the conclusion is that:

  1. Nobody is making money using Unity Ads. Except Unity. And they make A LOT of money.
  2. The ads is not per impression. It´s about how many “clicks” (taps) you get on the ad.

So, i am NOT going to use Unity Ads. A big intrusive video playing lowering the game experience to make like 2 dollars.

I am going to put a price on my game. Like 1 dollar. Why? I rather have 50 people buy the game then 5000 people using it with ads.

I have released apps both for Google Play and Itunes (free). And it is nothing worse to sit and answer emails about your app (support) for free from people of have not paid anything for the app. Well, there is worse things…but you get the idea.

If i get 50 people to pay for it…that makes 50 dollar. That is way more then from Unity Ads that i have read from different dev from different forums.

Unity says:
“Typically it takes 5000 impressions or more to determine the quality of the users you are sending. You will be getting revenue based on the quality your users and the impressions you are showing.”

“The quality”…if i buy an ad from you Unity. I only have to pay when someone comes to my website and buy my software right? No? So i pay for ads…but you don´t pay people that show the ad…doesn´t seem fair, right?

Seems like a scam! The only reason why this seems fair…is because we devs allow it to be. In hopes that one day…one day we will write that app or that game that will have millions of downloads…earning us a ton of money on ads. Well, that won´t happen for like 99.9999999% of us.

I love Unity and the company. But i really do think they should pull out of this “ad thing”. It´s really a scam business. And i really think it will affect how people view your business. It has to me.

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Hi,

Thanks for your feedback and views, not least that you have chosen Unity for developing you game. I certainly can understand your point of selling your game/app instead of monetizing through e.g. ads or in-app-purchases, which are the most common ways of making money of free-to-play games these days.

As said in the Unity keynote at GDC this year, Unity last year paid out more revenue to game developers, than we got from license sales (46 mins into the presentation below). So correct, Unity is making money on ads, similar to several other software companies, but most of the revenue from ads is paid to game developers.

Unity keynote at GDC 2016:

According to e.g. news (and multiple other sources), you are right that it’s challenging to become a successful mobile game developer, however I don’t think that’s particularly related to whether you are using Unity/Unity Ads or other tools for developing your game. Of course I’m biased as a Unity employee, but I believe that Unity is doing its best to help game developers to become successful, by providing a free game engine to get started (<100K revenue) but not least by providing services like Unity Ads, Unity Analytics and Unity IAP (in-app-purchases) to help you monetize your game, however seems it has always required some effort to make a top-grossing game, with or without Unity.

Have you checked out Unity Blog for ideas and best practices + examples of integrating and showing ads in your game? E.g. rewarded ads can be a way to actually make the end-user feel like they get value from watching an ad. And given Unity Ads almost exclusively shows ads for other games, usually there is a good chance that the ads doesn’t feel that intrusive for the gamers, and we of course also have an interest in showing the “best” ads for the users.

For some game developers ads has been a good way of making a sustainable business from their game, for others, as you say, might be that paying for the game in app store is a better way to make money. It’s completely up for you to decide. And you can also integrate other ad networks in your Unity game, so you don’t have to necessarily use Unity Ads, if you think other networks are providing better features/revenue etc.

Not sure if you are asking/being interested in advertising for your game, but in this case please contact our sales team at Technical Support

Hope this answered some of your questions/concerns about Unity Ads (and ads in general)

Best regards,
Rasmus, QA Lead Unity Ads

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Thanks, @rasmus-unity !

@MDJ9999 , if you are/were using Unity Ads, and simply weren’t generating the revenue you expected. I’d recommend reading through this recent thread. It looked as though he was doing everything right, but still wasn’t generating much revenue. There was one very important thing I overlooked, though.

In this case the user had specified with his project that he was targeting children under the age of 13, which is a setting we have in place for COPPA compliance. When this setting is enabled, we are not able to use behavioral tracking to serve ads that are more relevant to users on a user specific basis. This can have a significant impact on performance.

If your game is not specifically targeting children under the age of 13, DO NOT enable this setting.

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