Today, we’re announcing our most comprehensive monetization solution to date, Unity Monetization SDK 3.0. This SDK release is significant for two reasons:

1. It’s the first SDK we are releasing that goes beyond ads – with Personalized Placements, Unity ties together your ads and in-app purchases into a single auction, serving the format that is most relevant to each individual player based on lifetime value (LTV).

2. We’re supporting additional formats to meet your every game need. You can now monetize with banner and AR formats to add to our suite of ad formats that already include rewarded and interstitials across video, playables and display.

Beyond just ads: Personalized Placements

Personalized Placements is the decision engine that ties together ads and in-app purchase promotions, determining which format to serve based on player experience and impact to LTV. Lifetime value for a player is revenue multiplied by retention – Personalized Placements maximizes this by showing relevant content that will keep players engaged in your game.

How does it work?

Personalized Placements carries out an auction that makes a decision to show an IAP promotion, ads, or nothing based on which format will increase player LTV. For example, player A enters your game. She does not typically make in-app purchases. Unity, therefore, would serve her a rewarded video because showing an in-app purchase promotion would have been irrelevant and maybe even have caused them to churn.

This represents a critical step forward from today’s status quo, where only ads compete in an auction and the winner is based on the highest CPM.

What value does this bring for developers?

100% of the games that use Personalized Placements have seen a positive lift compared to either using ads or IAP alone. In the past quarter, we have seen an average lift of over 20% in total revenue for our developers.

How to get started?

To participate in Personalized Placements, you need to use Unity Ads and IAP Promo. If you are new to Unity IAP Promo, it’s a way for you to run customized and targeted promotion campaigns for items in your store. With the release of SDK 3.0, Unity IAP Promotion is integrated into your game so that no additional SDK integration is required.

Formats for your every game need: Banner and AR Ads

With SDK 3.0, you can now monetize with AR ads and banners in addition to our existing suite of rewarded and interstitial video, display interstitials, and playables.

AR Ads

AR ads are driving higher engagement and interaction rates compared to existing formats. In our initial beta, we saw completion rates ranging between 30-35%.

AR ads have the ability to truly surprise and delight players by blending the physical and digital worlds. This includes the ability to be transported into the world of a new TV show, virtually trying out various retail products, or even playing a game right on their coffee table. Mobile players are already walking around with AR-enabled devices in their pockets, and this is expected to scale to over one billion devices by the end of 2018.

How does it work?

At the time of an ad request during gameplay, the AR ad will ask the user for permission to use their camera in order to experience the ad. Once the player opts in they can begin to engage with the interactive content. In this example, the user is able to see the product come to life, change the colors and style, and then virtually try on the product. The experience concludes with an end card and call to action to learn more about the product. Once the experience is complete, gameplay resumes.

Banner Ads

Banner remains a consistent source of high ad revenue. Banner support is now available to all publishers who would like to integrate them into their games.

How to get started

To get started, download Unity Monetization SDK 3.0 in the asset store now. You can find more detailed information in our help center here.