How to launch UA campaigns: Creatives, bids, and budget strategy

Welcome to the third article in the series on best practices for growing UA with Unity Ads. This article focuses on best practices for creatives, bids, and budgeting.

Now that you’ve selected the right campaign type for your game and set up data integrations for Unity Ads, you’re ready to move on to creative, bidding, and budgeting strategies. These initial days are incredibly important for helping your long-term success. In this article, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to make the most of your campaigns: optimizing creatives, allocating budget, setting up bids, and selecting geos*.

Creative strategy

Out of everything you do in your campaign, your creatives are the piece that your audience actually notices. And whether or not they connect with your creatives determines the outcome of your entire campaign. For this reason, it’s incredibly important to run multiple formats, continuously test to understand which creatives are working, and consistently rotate and refresh creatives to avoid fatigue. Here are some tips to help optimize your creatives:

Launch your creatives for success

At the start of your campaign, We recommend using 6-10 creative sets (8 is ideal) and adding 4-6 new packs once earlier sets reach 5-10k starts (the number of times your video ad creative begins playing). You should continue to scale gradually until you reach 30 total creative packs.

In terms of budget, Unity recommends maintaining a daily cap of $50-$100 per creative pack. The recommendation is on a budget level. Of course, this recommendation entirely depends on the targeted countries and your respective Costs Per Install (CPIs).

Optimal creative setup for new games

If you’re launching a new game, you need to ensure that your creatives are diverse, continuously tested and refreshed, and aligned with your budget.

To diversify, Unity recommends that you run multiple formats to maximize reach. These formats include:

• Video + static end card
• Video + playable / Interactive End Card (different lengths and clicks)
• Standalone playable (longer gameplay)

Testing and creative rotation is also key for avoiding fatigue. You should rotate your creatives weekly and test new packs consistently to expand reach across inventory. Make sure you keep less than three creative packs in the learning phase at a time.

As you launch your campaign, it’s also important to keep your budget in check. Unity recommends reserving enough daily budget per pack. That means as you increase or decrease your budget, you should always keep in mind the number of packs you have live. Lastly, to keep your creatives impactful, you should upload new sets on a weekly basis. A great way to do this is by iterating on your top performing creatives. For example, you can provide a new orientation, theme, or duration.

Campaign budget and daily cap

There are two factors you should consider as you think about your budgeting for your campaigns. The first is campaign level budget and the second is daily cap.

Campaign level budget: Total spend ceiling on your campaign. Make sure not to set it too low or Unity will throttle delivery before your daily cap is reached, which disrupts pacing and performance. We recommend setting your campaign level budget to ‘unlimited’ and use the daily cap to control pacing.

Daily cap: This controls your campaign’s daily spend using a 7-day rolling window. It is your primary lever for spend pacing and can be set at campaign level, per individual country, or per country group. Make sure to set it at the right level for your targeting structure.

Budget recommendation at launch phase

During the initial launch phase, campaigns should aim for sufficient budget allocation and scalable delivery. When setting the campaign-level budget, always consider the following factors:

Number of Creative Packs: Allocate $50–100 per creative pack live under a campaign ID, at minimum for US and T1 countries.

ROAS Campaign Type: Budget guidance varies depending on the campaign type to help exit the learning phase as quickly as possible.

IAP & Hybrid ROAS campaigns: Add sufficient budget to acquire 10 purchasers per day so you can exit the learning phase within the first week. For example, with a 10% payer rate and a $30 CPI in the US, the minimum learning-phase budget would be $1,500.

Ad Revenue & Hybrid ROAS campaigns: Aim for a budget and bid that allows at least 200 install conversions daily during the learning phase. For example, if the US average CPI is $3, ensure a daily budget of at least $600.

D28 ROAS campaigns: Recommended to be launched only after the initial learning phase has been completed. Therefore, D28 ROAS campaigns have additional recommendations beyond the standard launch-phase budget settings:

Bid setting frameworks

Unity’s recommendations for setting bids depends on which campaign type you choose. Here’s our basic framework:

ROAS

For Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) campaigns, you will implement bids on Target Return on Ad Spend (tROAS). If you have historical data, you should set your bid to 85-90% of historical observed ROAS for the same geo and cohorts. This should be for the most recent 2-3 completed cohorts.

If you don’t have historical data, you should set your bid according to your desired ROAS KPI. If you’re not capping, drop tROAS by 10% every 3-5 days until capped.

Event optimization

For Event optimization campaigns, you should use the formula:

Historical CPI (same geo) ÷ historical install-to-event conversion %

If you don’t have historical data, use the following formula:

Target CPI (same geo) ÷ target install-to-event conversion %.

If your bid is not capping, add 10% to tROAS every 3-5 days until capped.

CPI

With Cost Per Install (CPI) campaigns, implement CPI/Max bid. If you have access to historical data from the same geo, your bid should be 10% higher than the historical CPI. If you don’t have historical data, simply start with the target CPI from the same geo and make your max bid 20% higher. If the bid is not capping, add 10% CPI/max bid every 3-5 days until capped.

Creative testing

If you’re running Creative testing campaigns, implement bids on CPI/Max bid. If you have historical data, make your bid 20% higher than the historical CPI from the same geo. If you don’t have historical data, start with the target CPI from the same geo and make your max bid 20% higher. If bids aren’t capping, add 10% CPI/Max bid every 3-5 days until capped.

Geo tier strategy

Unity does not support creative language targeting, so you need to make sure the countries under the same campaign share the same creative / language targeting strategy. Make sure your campaign’s budget is aligned to support the number of countries and creatives specified in your campaign. To start, we recommend launching with the US (Tier 0) alongside other Tier 1 and Tier 2 countries such as GB, Japan (Tier 1), and India (Tier 2).

Also, when grouping countries under the same campaign, ensure they share a similar creative strategy.

As of 2026, Unity Vector allows users to access the Vector Powered Optimization solutions without any prerequisite data threshold.

Set up your campaign for success

Launching your campaigns with Unity Ads requires a balance of creative strategy, smart budgeting, precise bid management, and thoughtful geo targeting. The first few weeks of your campaign are critical, as they set the foundation for long-term profitability and scalable growth.

With the right mix of creative diversity, budget discipline, competitive bidding, and geo prioritization, you'll be well-positioned to scale your UA efforts and achieve your performance KPIs.

Get even deeper insights on how to launch a successful UA campaign on Unity Ads.

Ready to try it for yourself? Get started with Unity Ads now!

*The strategies, budgets, bid settings, and performance figures in this article are general recommendations and illustrative examples only. Actual results vary based on your game, audience, geos, competition, and market conditions, and are not guaranteed.