Shopping for Weapons - Mastering Unity 2D Game Development - page 365

The terms used by the ad providers aren't meant to befuddle you, but they do take some
getting used to. Some of the terms and their meanings are described as follows:
• Fill rate : This term is the percentage rate at which the ads will be sent to your
game. If the provider has run out of ads or has none for your ad settings (age, re-
gion, language, and so on), this can drop to zero, meaning no ads.
• Impressions : This term is a figure to denote the number of successfully shown
ads in your game. Beware of the same ad shown several times; some ad providers
count this as the same impression. Just check against your own experience.
• Click through rate ( CTR ): This term is the higher paid option with ads to denote
that the players are actually clicking on the ads to look into them.
• eCPM : This term is basically a unit of measurement of how much you will be
paid per click or impression. Usually, you just need to multiply this figure by the
number of impressions to see how much you will get. Note that this figure will go
up and down based on just about anything, including the weather.
• AdTypes : There are various ad types and sizes supported by each provider with
different capabilities. Banners are the simplest. Being of a screen area size, they
take up the entire screen while displaying the ad. Others such as interspatial are
interactive and generally take up the entire screen. Check each provider to know
what they support and which you want to use.
Another factor to keep in mind is publishers. They will all perform differently in different
markets and languages. Generally, ad publishers focus on a few selected markets or only
take advertisements in certain languages, and so on.
Some of the publishers are as follows:
• Microsoft PubCenter : This publisher is strong in the US but is weak elsewhere
• Smaato : This publisher is strong in central Europe and the US but poor in non-
English countries
• Inneractive : This publisher provides a good mix of support and ads across the
globe but suffers from low or poor fill rates in practice (something they are work-
ing on)
• Google AdMob : This publisher is strong across the globe, but you need millions
of impressions to make any real money
There are many more publishers out there, such as InMobi, VServe, Leadbolt, and others,
that have their strengths and weaknesses. You will be able to determine which publisher
works best for you in which countries by personally testing them.