IAP Promo

Overview

IAP Promos allow developers to easily promote in-app purchases. Use them to target different players with unique purchase opportunities at various points in the game.

Requirements

Your game must use Unity version 5.4+, and enable the following services:

• Unity IAPSee IAP More info
  See in Glossary SDK 1.17+
• Unity Ads SDK 2.2+ (without mediation)

Unity recommends using the latest Unity IAP SDK (1.20+) and Unity Ads Monetization SDK (3.0+) for access to the latest features. Using older versions of the SDKs may cause initialization errors.

Note: When implementing Promos, you must initialize the IAP SDK prior to initializing the Ads SDK to avoid potential issues.

IAP Promo components

There are three major components of an IAP Promo, all of which have their own articles:

• Placements
• Products
• Promotions

Placements surface monetization content (ads or IAP Promos) to players. When a player triggers Promo-enabled Placements, the backend selects a Product to promote from that Placement’s eligible Promotions. The player can make an in-app purchase directly from the resulting interstitial ad.

Maximizing revenue with machine learning

IAP Promo’s machine learning software leverages the aggregated data in Unity’s network, looks for data patterns, then feeds them into a model to improve your game. This enables personalized offers, even for brand new players. This completely automated service works around the clock. For more information on using Promos to optimize revenue, see documentation on Personalized Placements.

How it works

When a Placement makes a request, the system looks at all available Products that are eligible to display. It then applies business criteria filtering (for example, geographic or OS targeting), and uses data science to select the best Product for a user given the remaining options. The model considers many data points to inform its choice, such as device characteristics and player session behavior. We define the best offer as the Product that maximizes lifetime value (LTV).

Getting started

To leverage IAP Promo’s machine learning feature, simply add multiple Products to a Promotion, and let Unity do the work.

Consider for example a Promotion that targets players when they complete a level:

• When the player completes a level, the game calls an ‘EndLevel’ Placement. The Placement’s fill request discovers three possible Products:
  • A $1.99 currency bundle with a 10% bonus
  • A $2.99 currency bundle with a 10% bonus
  • A $4.99 currency bundle with a 10% bonus
• The system finds that the player meets targeting criteria for all three offers.
• The algorithm determines which currency bundle best maximizes the player’s LTV(Lifetime Value) The estimated value of an average player over their lifetime with your application or game. More info
  See in Glossary, and displays that offer.

We recommend supplying at least three price points per Promotion (low, medium, and high), with appropriately commensurate payouts. As with any data-driven model, the more data points available, the more effective it is. There is no limit to the number of Products you can add to a Promotion; you may even choose to provide a Product for each price tier in the game’s app store.

• 2019–04–11 Page amended with editorial review