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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 cree firmemente que centrarse en la experiencia de los jugadores y ganarse su confianza es un requisito previo para tener éxito a largo plazo. También sabe que, para crear una buena relación con los jugadores en el mercado de los juegos casuales, se requiere un delicado equilibrio.

"Después de todo, lo más importante es la experiencia de juego que les brindas a los jugadores. Queremos que nuestros juegos sean un servicio que ellos quieran seguir jugando por muchos años más", dice Mickey Elimelech, director de Mercadotecnia de Space Ape.

La empresa también sabía que no podía depender solo de las IAP para obtener ingresos en un juego con atractivo masivo en el mercado.

"Sabíamos que si simplemente le agregábamos anuncios encima del juego, los jugadores se irían. Necesitábamos emplear tanto las IAP como los anuncios de una forma que se sintiera natural", dice 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.”