Setting Up Unity’s Legacy Ads Unity 2021
Summary
In this article, we’ll set up Unity’s legacy Ad system.
Disclaimer
Unity Ads is now “Unity Advertisement Legacy” and has been replaced with a more complex solution known as “Ads Mediation Package” which can be installed from the Unity Package Manager under “Unity Registry”.
Why Bother with Legacy Ads?
This article is for informational purposes and can be used for comparison to the new Ads Mediation Package.
Additionally, Legacy Ads is much simpler than Unity’s newer offerings.
I’m not suggesting you install it on a production project unless you have done your research on features and when support will end for Legacy Ads.
I haven’t!
Giving Users Access to Rewarded Ads
We’ll add a “Watch rewarded Ad” button to our Shop UI.
Here the player will be able to watch ads in exchange for diamonds which can be used to purchase items in the shop.
Unity Services
As shown above, click the “cloud” icon in the Unity Editor and then click “Ads”.
Alternatively, go to Project Settings > Services > Ads.
Select an organization your Unity account has access to.
Answer the question regarding the app’s target audience.
Now click the “OFF” button and then “Enable Test Mode” once it has loaded.
Test Mode lets us simulate ads.
Unity Gaming Services — Monitzation (Ads)
Log in to Unity’s Gaming Services website and select the “Monetization” tab.
Select the game where ads will be used.
Then click the circular “gear” icon next to it.
Here you’ll be able to see your Project ID.
Then go back to Unity Gaming Services (should be button on the left-hand side to do so).
Ads Mediation
Sorry, once I figured this bit out, I couldn’t go back and screenshot it!
If like me, nearly all Monetization sub tabs are the same page with a blue button regarding “Ad Mediation” at the top, click the button.
Then, it doesn’t really want to let you just use Unity Ads.
Select the other setting, then select just Unity Ads and all of the Monetization tabs should unlock.
If you make a mistake, you can go to Monetization > Current Project > Settings and edit the “Mediation Partner” section to select only Unit Ads or mediation.
If we scroll down, we can see this is also where we can get Game IDs, setup Apple and Google Store IDs, and more.
Ad Units
Unity uses a term called “Ad Units” to differentiate between different types of ads.
Since we’ll be deploying a rewarded ad to Android, let’s select that one.
I personally hate when an ad starts with full volume, so I won’t do that to my players.
I’ve set muting to “Audio muted”.
Players will be able to unmute if they find the ad interesting.
They will however have to watch the entire ad, so “Allow skip” is set to “No”.
Unity Ads Reporting
Once you do have ads implemented in a production game, the “Unity Ads Reporting” tab will become much more interesting!
We’ll get into the nitty gritty in the next article.
