Sich von der Masse abheben

When Space Ape was considering who to work with, they knew Unity could be a strong partner because they’d already built three successful games with the Unity engine and had a good relationship with the people behind it.

Space Ape felt they could count on Unity throughout the lifecycle of their title, from development to launch to monetization.

“We've been building our games with the Unity engine and promoted them through the user acquisition platform,” said Nicolas Boulay, Head of Growth at Space Ape. “Our recent exclusive partnership with Unity’s Unified Auction on Fastlane has helped us optimize and better understand better our users' ad LTV.”

Unified Auction provides an open marketplace where the highest bidder truly wins. This is as straightforward as it gets in the ad space — higher revenue for the publisher, and more control over the quality of ads and ultimately the player experience. The scale of the Unity developer network, their dedication to partners, and the sophistication of their products is unrivaled.

Space Ape ist fest davon überzeugt, dass das Vertrauen der Spieler und ein Fokus auf der Spielererfahrung für langfristigen Erfolg unerlässlich sind. Sie wissen, dass der Aufbau einer guten Beziehung zu den Spielern im Gelegenheitsspielemarkt ein empfindliches Gleichgewicht erfordert.

„Worauf es letztlich ankommt, ist die Spielerfahrung der Spieler. Wir möchten, dass Spieler unsere Spiele jahrelang spielen“, sagt Mickey Elimelech, CMO von Space Ape.

Ihnen war auch bewusst, dass sie sich bei einem Spiel für den Massenmarkt nicht allein auf Umsätze aus IAPs verlassen konnten.

„Wir wussten, dass die Spieler auf die Barrikaden gehen würden, wenn wir einfach Anzeigen schalten würden. Was wir brauchten, war eine Möglichkeit, sowohl IAPs als auch Anzeigen zu nutzen, die sich natürlich anfühlten“, sagt Elimelech.

Space Ape decided that the best way to create ads that players would embrace, was to design them into gameplay right from the start, so that they would feel like a natural part of the game. The studio is set up in small teams, which have the power to make decisions independently. This made it easier for Boulay to work with the product and game teams as well as Unity on monetization, creating the best possible user experience and optimizing the business model.

“Unity has always been there to meet our needs,” said Boulay. “There’s always someone to answer questions, to help us optimize our ads across the Auction, and to make sure we know how optimization takes place.”

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The Fastlane team did extensive testing in beta and found that engagement in optional rewarded video ads was higher when they were implemented at the end of a race. This testing paid off when they launched globally.

“As an exclusive partner, Unity has the unique ability to help optimize the player experience and monetization of our games with their Unified Auction. The scale of their developer network, their dedication to partners, and the sophistication of their products has helped us increase revenue while keeping our players happy,” Boulay said. “We found that we were able to have both IAP and ads co-existing in a way that optimizes the user experience and Lifetime Value (LTV), and pays off in terms of revenue.”