If you have been in the mobile games industry for some time now, you’ve had a front-row seat to the story of ad quality deterioration over the years. Anecdotally, I remember that back in 2018, one ad network was testing “something crazy” called store-kit overlay and one email was enough to stop those experiments on our game because we didn’t like the experience, it was too aggressive and confusing for our players. Today, every day is a new challenge with networks coming up with new “performance improvements”.
To be fair, not all the blame is on the ad network side. Advertisers are all too ready to sacrifice quality in the race for the lowest CPI. A couple (out of countless) bad practices commonly seen nowadays:
All of the above is problematic for any mobile game developer, let alone for those that attract younger audiences, those that fall under COPPA and Google Family Ads Program rules. Apple and Google as store owners enforce a certain set of rules when it comes to ads, while EU and other governing bodies are mostly focused on the data being used for ad serving.
Given these persistent challenges, any tool that gives publishers more control is a welcome development. Tapping directly into this need, Unity announced today that it's making its Ad Quality tool available completely for free for everyone - no matter whether or not they are using their LevelPlay mediation tool, ironSource or UnityAds ad networks or not.
Ultimately, the battle for ad quality is a battle for user trust and long-term retention. While aggressive and misleading creatives might drive down short-term CPIs, they risk poisoning the well for the entire ecosystem. Giving publishers transparent and powerful tools to curate their ad experience is a critical first step in restoring balance. To dive deeper into what Unity is offering, we had an exclusive opportunity to sit down and chat with Unity’s Felix Thé, SVP of Product. We discuss how publishers can leverage the tool, both proactively and reactively, what metrics to keep an eye on, as well as what's next on Unity's roadmap.
GameBiz: Why did you decide to make the Ad Quality tool available for all app developers, regardless of the ad mediation tool they are using?
Felix Thé: Creating great content and acquiring players takes real effort, time, and investment, and developers should be able to protect and grow that hard-earned value. That’s why we aim to prevent the ad experience - be it UX or content-related - from diminishing the player experience and eroding that value. Our commitment is to place advertising hand-in-hand with high-quality content by giving developers greater transparency into the ads shown in their games—so they know exactly what their players see. It’s that simple.
To support that purpose, we’ve made our Ad Quality tool free and mediation agnostic because we believe all developers deserve full transparency and control over the ad experience in their games. This should come without the added friction of paid product requirement or specific mediation provider selection. Our goal is to set a standard for in-app advertising, one built on empowering developers to protect their brand, build player trust, and gain insights about what’s running in their games, in detail. This allows them to deliver the best possible player experiences and focus on building great games and engaged communities.
GameBiz: Does that mean that Ad Quality can be used by app developers regardless of their mediation of choice, not just LevelPlay? Whether they use mediation from a third party or they're building their own mediation tool in-house?
Felix Thé: Yes, Ad Quality works across any mediation platform.
Getting started is pretty simple: developers just need to integrate the Ad Quality SDK. And for those already using LevelPlay or ironSource Ads SDK 8.9.0 or later, it’s already included — they just need to turn it on.
GameBiz: What do you advise developers who intend to use Ad Quality? Should this tool be used to react to users’ complaints or to proactively try to avoid them altogether?
Felix Thé: Ideally, developers should use this tool to proactively avoid complaints altogether. Players normally only complain about something repetitive or a severe offense. However, they shouldn’t wait until that happens when they have the tool to detect issues before they arise. This is where Ad Quality shines. It logs creatives seen and the ad network that served them, at a very detailed level and with near real-time signals. They can set up alerts to get notified if a certain type of ad — say, one that causes high churn, misclicks, inappropriate for certain age groups — starts running in your game. That way, you catch issues early before they become real problems for your players.
That said, we understand that we cannot avoid unideal creatives altogether so developers can certainly use it for both.
We’re also adding AI tagging soon, which will help flag potentially risky creatives automatically — giving developers even more options to stay ahead of issues.
It's critical to consistently monitor the data, as ad quality is highly dependent on each game. Evaluating what works (or doesn't) for a specific audience and setting alerts for indicators crossing undesirable thresholds helps maximize user retention and minimize player issues.
GameBiz: Can you give us a couple of use cases for how app developers can leverage Unity’s Ad Quality tool?
Felix Thé: Proactive Content Moderation (Creatives Page): Developers can use the 'Creatives' page, with large creative thumbnails, to quickly identify problematic ad content – such as inappropriate themes, misleading creatives, or any content deemed not suitable to be broadcast to players through your company’s rules of engagement – before they become widespread issues. They can then take action, like adding these creatives to a blocklist, ensuring their brand integrity is maintained and players aren't exposed to unwanted ads.
Performance & UX Optimization (Analysis Page): The 'Analysis' page allows developers to monitor key performance and user experience metrics across their ad content. For instance, they can pinpoint advertisers and titles causing high churn rates, excessive misclicks, or negative sentiment. This insight enables them to troubleshoot harmful content or block underperforming creatives to improve player retention and satisfaction.
GameBiz: Say I’m an app developer and I identified a bunch of inappropriate content using the Ad Quality tool. What then? What options do I have as an app developer?
Felix Thé: Once you find a problematic creative, Ad Quality makes it easy to copy the details and pass them along to your mediation platform or ad network to get it removed. It’s a pretty straightforward process, and we’ve got step-by-step instructions in our Knowledge Center to help you through it.
GameBiz: Is it possible to make any actions directly from Ad Quality? For example, blocking specific creatives, advertisers or similar?
Felix Thé: Ad Quality doesn't directly offer in-tool blocking functionalities – those actions typically reside within the ad networks or mediation platforms themselves. However, it enables publishers to quickly copy the data of a problematic creative, and then report it to the relevant network(s) or platforms for immediate action.
GameBiz: Is there a way to measure the impact of using Ad Quality? What metrics should the app developers be monitoring when using the capabilities of Ad Quality?
Felix Thé: Retention and player satisfaction (often reflected in reduced support tickets related to ad experiences) are ideal ways to measure the impact of the Ad Quality tool.
The metrics an app developer monitors will vary depending on their needs and preferences for their particular game. As a standard, QCTR (Quality Click Through Rate) is an incredibly important metric to check as it distinguishes intentional, high-quality clicks from the total number of clicks, helping a developer gauge how many clicks genuinely reflect user interest.
There are other proprietary metrics uniquely offered by Unity’s Ad Quality tool, designed to help publishers truly optimize the ad experience for their players.
GameBiz: In the recent announcement, you also hinted that there’s more to what app developers can expect from Ad Quality. You mention something about AI-powered tagging - could you maybe share a bit more? Any expectations as to when app developers might get their hands on this new feature?
Felix Thé: We're incredibly excited about the upcoming AI-powered Creative Tagging feature. It's designed to significantly streamline the ad experience monitoring process and ensure the highest quality creatives are displayed in an app. This feature leverages advanced AI to automatically tag creatives based on their content, allowing for much more granular control and effortless identification of specific ad types. Developers will also be able to use custom tags, manually tag any ads that come from a specific genre of interest, and much more.
This powerful new capability is going into a closed beta in the next few weeks, with a public launch expected later this quarter.
