Placements and eCPM targets

Third-party-mediated customers can use Placements to set eCPM thresholds for advertisers to bid on Ad Units.

eCPM (effective cost per mille) is the average price your project earns from advertisers per thousand impressions. When setting eCPM targets, Unity will target that price and optimize to deliver the maximum demand at the specified eCPM.

  • A Placement always applies to a single Ad Unit, and cannot exist without one.
  • Placements inherit the ad format settings of their associated Ad Units. This means you can quickly adjust the ad format settings of many eCPM targets within the single Ad Unit they are linked to.
  • Each Placement can target one or multiple countries with unique pricing.

Important: Although eCPM targets can help to drive your specified eCPM, implementing these restrictions will limit delivery and potentially impact your overall revenue. Higher targets have a higher risk of decreasing overall revenue by filling less.

Create a Placement

To access the Placement Management page, from the Unity Ads Monetization dashboard, select Placements in the secondary navigation menu.

Use the Placement Management page to set eCPM targets by app store, country, and Ad Unit. To set a new Placement, find the Ad Unit to apply it to, and then select Add Placement.

In the creation modal, specify the following fields for each corresponding geo.

Placement Name

The Placement Name identifies the Placement on the dashboard. Placement IDs are based on your initial name, so this field can be helpful when managing large numbers of Placements across multiple mediators.

  • To add a Placement to the Ad Unit, select Additional Placement.
  • To remove a Placement from the Ad Unit, select Remove.

Important: If you use a mediation provider to optimize across multiple networks, you must also configure any Placement IDs that are used for eCPM targeting in your mediation platform.

Backfill/auto-eCPM Placement

Enable this checkbox to remove targets for the Placement, which effectively configures it to accept bids at any price. This is commonly used for backfill as a catch-all at the bottom of a mediation waterfall. If you are using auto-eCPM, the Placement will move up and down in the waterfall depending on its performance.

Geo targets

Use the Geo Target field to select which countries to target. The default setting (Global) includes all countries. You can select from Geo Collection presets (recommended), or choose which countries to include manually.

You can have multiple geo targets for a given Placement, but you must specify at least one geo target to create the Placement. Select Add Geo Target to add geo targets with distinct price points.

Note: Placements prioritize geo-specific prices over the global price setting, which is a blended average for all other countries (excluding those with specified targets).

Important: By default, the Global geo-target option sets the CPM for all countries with unspecified price targets and accepts ads at any price if you don’t set a global floor with a desired price target. This can result to impressions with low eCPM being filled. To ensure your app revenue is optimized, set a global floor in addition to a country-specific floor for each geo-target in your project to avoid impressions with low eCPMs.

eCPM targets

Use the Target field to set the eCPM for each corresponding geo target.

The following example shows an Ad Unit configuration for a single Placement, targeting the United States and Canada with one price, and a global target for all other regions.

Configure eCPM targets in a CSV

You can import a CSV file to bulk add or edit eCPM targets. You can download the template can from the dashboard help text, or export your existing configuration by selecting Download.

Edit the form by filling out the following columns:

  • countryCode is the two-letter country code for the geo target. Use GLOBAL for the global designation. Note that exporting your targets to CSV converts any applied Geo Collections into a list of countries when you re-import.
  • targetPrice is the eCPM value that you are targeting for the corresponding geos. Note that prices must use General format (as opposed to Number, Currency, or Accounting format). For more information, refer to the Microsoft documentation on Available number formats in Excel.

After you have made your edits, save the document as a CSV file and select Upload to import your changes. You must verify any changes before saving them to the dashboard. If any errors exist in your file, the verification modal will advise you.