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Dynamic Playable Ads - Overview

Dynamic playables are only available with Enterprise and Pro Subscriptions.

Dynamic playables allow you test various creative configurations within a single playable ad, without needing to re-download or submit multiple ads to the ad network.

By using a dynamic playables you are able to test up to 256 permutations (unique creative configs) of your ad. Unity Playworks Plugin will dynamically update the playable in real-time and monitor the ad performance, until we are able to determine which permutation is driving the best results for your campaign.

Optimisation Metric

Depending on your creative goals, Unity Playworks Plugin allows you to choose how to optimise your dynamic playable ads.

  • IPM - optimise for installs (only available for the ironSource ad network)
  • CTR - optimise for clicks

Learn how to change your optimisation metric here.

Please ensure you have enabled attribution for your playable before using IPM as an optimisation metric. Full instructions can be found here.

How does it work?

When creating playables with Luna, you are able to tag various elements within your game to use as playable variables. For example, you could tag the colour of your main character, or the level you want you user to play; these can then be edited to created unlimited variations of your playable in Unity Playworks.

When creating a Dynamic playable, instead of selecting unique values for each of your in-game elements, you are able to input multiple values.

Once created you can download the dynamic playable, you will deliver that to the ad network as a single file. When the ad goes live, Unity Playworks Plugin connects to the playable via client-to-server communication and notifies the playable with the permutation to be served for this specific ad impression based on historical performance metrics.

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  1. Create a dynamic playable.
  2. Select the variable values you want to test, which will create a number of possible permutations (256 max).
  3. Select your optimisation metric and sample size.
  4. Download the file and upload this to the network of choice.
  5. Once live, the ad communicates with Unity Playworks Plugin and will be notified of the permutation to be served for each ad impression.
  6. Unity Playworks Plugin monitors the performance of each permutation being tested, and updates the delivery algorithm to ensure the best performing ad receives the most traffic. To do this, Unity Playworks Plugin uses your optimisation metric.
  7. Each permutation is tested.
  8. The final winning permutation will now serve 100% of traffic.

Example

  1. Single playable

Here we see the a playable ad, with single values of each of the in-game variables.

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When this ad is set live, the background colours will be black and navy blue.

  1. Dynamic playable

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In the above example, we have chosen a selection of values for the background colours, which equate to 9 possible permutations.

When this ad is set live, Unity Playworks Plugin will test all 9 permutations until the test is concluded and a winner is found.

  1. Linked Variables

There may be a situation where you want to define a select group of combinations, and not have unwanted overlaps.

In this case, you may add these variables into a new Unity Playworks Group, and enable Linking. In doing this, every variation will be explicitly linked to a single variation of the other variables in the group.

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  1. Dynamic playable status

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When dynamic playable ads go live, you can view the status of each permutation that's being tested.

Each permutation can have one of the these three statuses:

  • Default - is the version Unity Playworks Plugin shows if a configuration of a playable failed to load.
  • Completed - means it has been tested and not currently being shown.
  • Live - is still being tested or is the current wining configurations of the ad.

When to use dynamic playable ads

Dynamic Playable ads allow you to test a large number of creative variations in a short period of time, whilst automating the performance optimisation.

Therefore, we recommend using this format if your playable ad contains a large number of creative options such as, but not limited to:

  • Background
  • Characters
  • Colours
  • Texts (i.e. tutorial text)
  • End card styles

When not to use dynamic playable ads

CTR Optimisation

We recommend that you do not use dynamic playable ads to control the click behaviour of your ad i.e. testing whether the playable has 3-clicks or 4-clicks. Such changes drastically impact the experience in the ad, will draw unreliable conclusions from a dynamic playable test and may affect the network's delivery algorithm.

Network Support

Currently, dynamic playables are supported on the following ad networks:

  • AdColony
  • ironSource
  • Mraid Ads
  • Unity Ads
  • Vungle
  • Applovin (You will need to contact them for permission, see below)
If you wish to use dynamic playables in conjunction with Applovin, you will need to contact Applovin prior to uploading to get the functionality enabled. Otherwise the playable will be rejected.

Best Practices

Here are some best practices we have collected when using dynamic playables:

  • Use one dynamic playable per Network and Operating System for best results i.e. Unity Ads - iOS, Unity Ads - Android.
  • Keep your playable ads and interactive end cards (IEC) as separate dynamic playable creatives.