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Carolyn-C-McD edited this page Feb 22, 2022 · 43 revisions

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Title: Getting started
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Overview

Welcome! The following documentation helps advertisers acquire users through Unity’s self-serve User Acquisition dashboard.

Use the dashboard to quickly and easily create high-performing advertising campaigns for your apps.

Quick links

Creating a Unity Developer ID

To get started with Acquire, create a Unity Developer ID. If you already have one, skip this step.

  1. Click here to access the Unity ID login page, then choose to create an account.

  2. Follow the instructions to create a user ID and password.

  3. Verify your account via email.

  4. Navigate to the User Acquisition section of the Unity Dashboard (under the Growth tab) to start adding apps and campaigns.

Working with advertiser domains

To maximize the scale of your campaign, and your chances of acquiring high-quality users from potential supplies provided by Reach extension, you must associate an adverstiser domain with each app. An advertiser domain is a requirement to be able to bid in certain exchanges outside of Unity. This section explains the guidelines for an advertiser domain. Adding apps to the Campaigns dashboard explains how to associate the domain with your app.

General guidelines:

  • Where possible, Unity will automatically pre-populate the advertiser domain for you.
  • Each app can have its own advertiser domain.
  • Apps can have the same advertiser domain in case you don’t have app-specific domains but use your company URL as the advertiser domain.
  • This feature is available to all advertisers.
  • This field is optional.
  • The advertiser domain has to be related to the app or to its publisher, not an advertising agency.
  • Advertiser domain is not required to acquire users with Unity.
  • You need to ensure that the URL exists and is crawlable. Otherwise, you might not be able to bid in third-party exchanges and you might lose potential scale. For instance, Unity’s validation will allow a domain to pass in case it looks correct, but if that URL is a random input from the advertiser that doesn’t actually work, it won’t add any value.
  • Valid and crawlable domain: needs to be an actual website.
  • If there’s no domain you can use, you can leave the advertiser domain blank. Or, consider creating a new website and using that domain as your advertiser domain.
  • Must be linked to the advertiser/app. Don’t add domains that don’t relate to your publishing company or the app.

In case you’re already running campaigns with DSPs, you should consider using the same advertiser domain across all programmatic partners

URL Validation rules:

  • Needs to be in the domain name format: for instance yourgame.com
  • It cannot be in this type of format https://www.yourgame.com/app.
  • It can be in this type of format: studio.yourgame.com.
  • It must follows general domain standards: no protocol (e.g. HTTPS), no www, no path.

Adding apps to the Campaigns dashboard

Once you’ve created and verified your account, you can start adding apps to the User Acquisition dashboard:

  1. From the Apps page, click the blue Add App button.

  2. Click Add by store URL. Then, copy the app's store URL in the Add app by store URLs pop up and click Advertise this app to continue.

  3. The Add adverstiser domain pop up appears. **Note **: Note: Entering this domain is recommended for Reach Extension, which ensures maximum campaign reach. The URL can be your company or app's homepage. It should be in a top-level format, such as example.com. It might be prepopulated, or you might need to enter an app. Please see Working with advertiser domains for more information.

  4. Click Save or Skip for now.

Use the Apps page to add new apps, edit existing apps, or view an overview of your existing apps. Selecting an app on this page opens subsequent tabs for configuring campaigns and creatives (ad content) for the selected app.

From the Apps page, you can:

  • Add apps via app store URL (iOS and Android)
  • View basic statistics per app and adjust a statistics timeframe or sort order per column
  • Add an advertiser domain value for Reach Extension.
  • Use the search bar to search by app name, platform (Apple and Google) or game ID.
  • Tag favorite apps (per user): select the star-icon on the left of the apps list.
  • Enable budget alerts, add an advertiser domain, or delete an app by selecting the three dots beside a specified app.

Creating campaigns

To create a new campaign for your app:

  1. From the User Acquisition dashboard, select Apps from the left menu. Then, click an app.

  2. The app's campaign page will appear. Select the campaign type. The default campaign type includes Installs. For information on Return on ad spend or Retention campaign types, see documentation on Audience Pinpointer campaigns).

  3. Click Next to begin creating the campaign.

  4. Name your campaign. Unity recommends using a format that includes the app name, platform, and targeted region for clarity (for example, "TrashDash_iOS_Tier1").

  5. Click Create to save.

Campaign status

Once you create a new campaign, its status appears in the Campaigns page for the associated app. Each campaign requires three minimum components to activate:

For more information on these settings, see documentation on Configuring campaigns.

The option to activate your campaign remains disabled until eligibility criteria is met. Once your campaign is adequately configured, return to the campaign status section and select Go live with your campaign to activate it.

Note: Your campaign will go live once it has been approved (see documentation on campaign moderation). If your campaign is live, you will see a Pause campaign button instead. If your campaign is paused, you will see Resume campaign.

You can view a list of the app's associated campaigns and their name, remaining budget, and status (live or paused). Change any of your campaign’s settings at any time from the dashboard campaigns page associated with your app. Select the campaign’s Campaign Name to edit its settings.

Configuring campaigns

Next, you’ll want to configure the campaign. The documentation on Configuring campaigns covers the following topics in depth:

Optimizing campaigns

Finally, we recommend reading up on best practices for getting the most out of your campaign designs.

Reach extension

Reach extension gives you access to more supply, reaching valuable users from other exchanges while leveraging Unity’s optimization tools and mobile advertising expertise. Reach extension is automatically enabled for all Unity's ad campaigns where applicable. In order to access this supply, you must associate an advertiser domain with the app.

For more information, see the reach extension FAQs.

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