As of today, Unity is the biggest eco system for mobile game developers with about 1/2 of the developers claiming they are using Unity and about 1/3 of the game apps in the market place built with it. Unity has 2.5M registered developers and 600K active ones. However, as much as Unity can help you make your game, you still have to turn revenue. For that purpose you can add plugins that will help you monetize your mobile game. There are two main categories:
- Advertising
- Selling virtual goods via In-App Purchase (IAP)
If you are monetizing your game with ads it’s important to get visibility to what drives your revenue stream and analyze ad ltv per cohort. Check out SOOMLA TRACEBACK – Ad LTV as a Service.
Top Unity In-App Purchase Plugins
Anyone that tried to implement IAP in Unity on their own will tell you it’s a huge mistake. There are great plugins that will help you do that and save you about a month’s work and endless amounts of headache. There are some differences between them so we created a simple table to help you compare. The differences are along these attributes:
- Type – some plugins include just the IAP library while others also includes a framework to help you set up your virtual goods and ingame economy
- Platforms – some vendors offer a cross platform plugin while others requires you to purchase a separate plugin for each platform and there are also differences around which platforms are supported
- Popularity – popular plugins are more battle tested and are more likely to offer future versions and extensions
- Support – some plugins are supported by the vendor while others allow you to get direct support as well as community support
- Price – range from free to $175 per plugin
Best Unity Ad Plugins
- Ad formats:
- Offers – value exchange where users are rewarded by coins to see ads – Learn More
- Video – video ads shown inside your game
- Interstitial – full page banner ads – Learn More
- Advertised products – some ads will show other games while other ads can feature brands
- Payment model:
- CPM – fixed fee for each 1,000 impressions
- CPC – fee per click
- CPI – fee per install
- CPCV – fee per each completed video view
- Rev-Share – the ad network pays a ratio of what they are getting from the advertisers
- Popularity – more popular plugins are usually more tested and proven
Please also include plugin from GreedyGame Media in your list which is used to set up themes based on events, location. SDK can be downloaded once you get access to i18n-Panel. To get access visit http://www.greedygame.com. More information can be found at http://prezi.com/75aauuqay-wx/greedygame-media-i18n-panel/
Hi Rahul, looks like the service is still in it’s early stages so I would rather wait before including it. Keep me posted on your progress. Thanks!
Thanks for the reply. Yes, our plugin is been used by early adopter community right now and we are looking at more developers to join them in giving us feedback. We aim to increase retention and reach through localized and event based assets in game. I would love to keep you updated.
Hi Yaniv,
Can you please tell something about GameAdTrading? http://www.gameadtrading.com
Are they reliable?
Thanks in advance 🙂
Hi Irfan,
as far as I can give you a valid answer… Yes, our service is reliable. We provide an easy SDK integration, 100% filrate and Facebook support. What are you exactly looking for?
Best, Sebastian
with some of these SDKs could I chose the types of games advertised? For example if I do not want any 18+ games advertised, can I do that?
I don’t have this info but that’s an interesting topic. I might research in the future. I do believe Chartboost have the ability to block advertisers but not sure it’s based on the rating system as opposed to one by one.
I’ve been using adtomatik for the last two months and got excellent results, higher fill rates and best ecpm than others ad networks.
Yaniv – We recently launched http://www.StoreFrontSDK.com which is a free service and plugin (Unity3D) that generates shops within mobile apps where devs can sell their custom-designed goods and apparel. It’s been used in the SnorgTees app and several games are implementing it as well. Check it out – it’s certainly a great way to monetize an app 🙂
What about Google Admob Ads plugin for unity ? Isn’t as good as these ones?
You’re right, it probably is as good. We’re going to do a 2015 update later on this year and we’ll consider adding it in. BTW, InMobi and RevMob are also pretty big.
What do you use in your game at the moment?
Well at the moment none because I’m searching for the best Ad plugin to integrate for my coming game. As far as I’ve investigated. The best are Chartboost and Adcolony. I think I’ll use those ones.
Are you considering in-app purchases as well? Definitely check out our plugin for that:
https://github.com/soomla/unity3d-store
https://github.com/soomla/cocos2dx-store
Hey Yaniv nice article. However you are missing a quite popular method lately, monetization with surveys. Monetizing mobile apps with surveys pay up to 20x more than classic advertising. Have a look at Pollfish (https://www.pollfish.com/unity)
Hi Andreas, I’m Gur, Yaniv’s co-founder. First time I hear of Pollfish, looks really interesting. We’ve recently launched http://gamegear.io/ which is an online directory of all mobile game SDKs and monetization solutions. The directory is open source so you can contribute Pollfish to the list and we’ll be happy to add you. See contribution guidelines on Github:
https://github.com/soomla/gamegear.io#contribution-guidelines
Nice!
Would you like if i share this info at my blog > unity3diy