How to improve ad performance using creative and site data

Overview

With this use case, you will learn how to utilize creative and site level data from the Unity Advertising API in a Google Data Studio dashboard.

At the end of this use case you will have a better understanding of how creative and site level data can be visualized in Google Data studio and how different metrics can help analyze performance.

Introduction

App publishers look at multiple data sources and analyses on a daily basis to improve their user-acquisition (UA) activities, and achieve the highest return on investment (ROI).

These data sources can include MMPs, ad channels, mediation channels, product analytics platforms, and more. Looking at various data points at different granularities and across different sources and dashboards can be extremely overwhelming.

Growth Fullstack helps you make better and faster decisions through no-code data pipelines and customized BI solutions.

Creative and Site Level data

Many ad channels make the creative and site level data available to app publishers for in-depth analyses of their UA spend and the associated installs they receive through it. With the right approach these data points can be a gold mine of opportunity.

Unity Advertising Statistics API allows advertisers to extract creative and site level data that can be used to unlock valuable insights. With data in this granularity, as a UA professional, you would be able to learn the following:

Which creatives and sites got you the most installs
And which creative and sites are getting you the highest ROI

This information is crucial for your UA efforts. You can utilize the insight you get on the click through rates of various creatives to either improve the quality of the creatives that are not performing well, or replacing under-performing creatives with those that work better. You would also invest in bidding higher on the sites that got you the most installs, and in turn ROI. How you use this information, and what metrics you choose to focus on, depends entirely on your strategy and business goals.

Let’s have a look at what the dashboard templates with creative and site level data would look like below.

Google Data Studio dashboard example with creative-level data from the Unity Advertising API

Creative Data Dashboard

Google Data Studio dashboard example with creative-level data from the Unity Advertising API

The dashboard shown above allows you to utilize multiple filters such as date range, campaigns, countries and apps to dig deeper into the other charts and tables.
The major metrics shown here are as follows:

Spend: The total amount spent on each campaign
Views: The total views across each campaign and creative
Site id: This represents the app on which your ad is shown. In the dashboard above, the orange bars indicate the amount of site ID’’s/apps the respective creative was shown in
Clicks: The total number of clicks each creative received
Installs: The total number of installs received from ads shown and then clicked
Cost per impression (CPI): Cost per impression is a derived metric which allows you to understand how costly each view was for each campaign/creative
Click through rate (CTR): The click through rate is another derived metric that is used to compare different creatives and understand which creatives got the most clicks from users
Install Rate: The install rate is a derived metric that allows you to compare how many installs were received compared to the views or clicks

The dashboard contains multiple views to improve the understanding of which creatives are working best across your campaigns.

From the Creative Summary KPI table it is evident that Creative 4 is performing the best in terms of the install rate and click through rate, but is shown across the least site ID’s/apps. Therefore, it would make sense to either use this creative across other campaigns and countries or improve other creatives based on your intuition on why they are under-performing.

Other views such as App split and trendlines allow you to make other inferences across multiple days on which campaigns were run.

In the next example, let’s look at a similar dashboard view this time with site-level data.

Google Data Studio dashboard example with site-level data from the Unity Advertising API

Site Data Dashboard

Google Data Studio dashboard example with site-level data from the Unity Advertising API

The Site data dashboard uses the same dataset as the creative data dashboard above, but looks at it from a different lens. This time, we try to understand the performance of our campaigns across different site ids instead of creatives.

These site ids are nothing but different apps on which ads are shown. Identifying sites that got you the most conversions can help improve your bidding optimization efforts and ROI. Through the use of different derived metrics we can also optimize our campaigns for better CTR or CPI if needed. Site level analysis also helps us identify fraudulent clicks as well.

Going deeper in your analysis will enable you to make informed decisions and aid your user acquisition efforts. Growth FullStack’s integration with Unity and other ad networks enables you to get the most precise information at the most granular level. With such dashboards in place, you would no longer need to look at multiple dashboards for each of your channels to make key business decisions. We can help you create a consolidated view so you can save time, and focus on getting more users for your apps.

How you can set up the creative and site level dashboard with Growth FullStack (step-by-step)

Growth FullStack customers who want to use our no-code data pipeline services can use this dashboard as a template. Follow the steps below to get started:

Step 1: Connect to your Google Data Studio account. If you don’t already have an account, you can create one here for free.

Step 2: Click on this link to view our anonymized template for the Unity Ads dashboard or this link for the tenjin version.

Step 3: Make a copy of the report in the template. This will show you a pop-up.

Step 4: Select a data source. You will need to replace the demo dataset with yours.

What you need

You need to have data from Unity Advertising Statistics API in your data warehouse environment (Redshift and BigQuery are supported). Please configure this in Growth FullStack’s interface or reach out to your account manager if you need help.

FAQ

Can this dashboard be personalized as per my requirements?

Yes. In the Calculated Fields section of Data Studio, you will be able to see the available fields, metrics and dimensions from the Unity Advertising Statistics API.

Your Growth FullStack Account Manager will be able to help you personalize this dashboard.

Is this dashboard supported with other tools?

Yes, we can build something similar with Tableau, Looker, Mode and other BI Tools. Contact your Growth FullStack Account Manager for more details.

Feedback

Do you have any feedback for us?

We at Growth FullStack are always happy to receive your valuable feedback. Whether it’s about requesting additional support on optimizing your workflows, building a customized dashboard, or anything else, feel free to reach out to us and let us know how we can support you further.

Iterate and Maintain

Iterate

This dashboard can be edited to reflect the metrics that you think fit. Additionally, Unity offers data at various levels of breakdown which allows for different kinds of analyses. You can find details of available breakdown and types of data in Unity documentation here.