Mastering the ad experience: Three KPIs to track

Amir Tapiro is the senior growth manager at Unity.

In recent years, the in-app ad experience has come under the spotlight – and for good reason.

For developers, maintaining their app’s brand integrity and providing an optimal user experience are essential goals. Ensuring that ads align with these objectives is critical, and this means identifying and removing those that fall short. Developers must monitor, detect, and remove content that doesn’t adhere to their guidelines.

When we talk about brand integrity, we’re referring to factors like the visual and creative quality of ads, whether they’re appropriate for the intended audience, and even whether the advertisers themselves are eligible to show ads in a given app (for instance, competing advertisers might be on a blocklist.) 

However, healthy ad quality isn’t just about visuals – it’s equally about the impact ads have on the user experience. And improving the user experience in relation to ads is more nuanced, which is where tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) comes into play.

Importantly, there’s no one-size-fits-all framework here – every developer or publisher defines and decides what ad experience is or isn’t acceptable for them. 

Let’s explore 3 KPIs that are important to track to preserve a healthy ad experience in your app:

Ad duration

Ad duration is the time from when the ad appears to when it is closed, including all end cards, and it’s a great initial indication of ad quality.

While we’d like players to watch ads patiently until the end, a long ad duration isn’t a great sign from a user experience perspective. Checking the ad duration together with the ad escape rate – the percentage of ads that were not closed properly – will give an indication of whether to look into the advertiser and/or creatives.

In a recent Unity survey of ad experiences, 60% of respondents said that ads are too long. Utilising data from our ad networks we have established the optimal timeframe as approximately 30 seconds for a rewarded video ad and shorter for interstitials.

Ensuring that the ads served in your game remain within your set benchmarks is the first priority, and this can be identified at the ad network level. 

Churn rate

Next up is the churn rate. Many factors can cause churn, but in this instance, it refers to churn caused by an ad, i.e. how many users clicked on an ad and didn’t return within a specific timeframe.

Each developer determines the retention length that matters most to them, such as D1/D3/D7/D14. If a user doesn’t return to the app in the specified timeframe then the churn can be attributed to a specific advertiser and to a specific creative.

It’s worth noting that churn isn’t always caused by “bad” ad practices. Sometimes, an ad can be good, but the player simply prefers an alternative game and so doesn’t return. 

While it’s vital to prevent churn, there’s another factor at play. Most of the ads in your app will likely come from your direct or indirect competitors, as they stand to benefit the most by converting your users into theirs.

So, while monitoring the churn rate and its sources, it’s important to weigh up the churn yield – the amount of revenue generated per churned user. Monitoring churn rate alongside churn yield enables developers to strike a balance between profitability and retention. Testing and optimising ad creatives and sources ensures your audience receives only high-quality ads.

QCTR (Quality click through rate) 

Lastly, it’s important to look at the QCTR, a metric designed to measure intentional, high-quality clicks versus all clicks. The idea here is to quantify how many clicks are a true indication of user interest, as opposed to unintentional interactions.

What counts as an unintentional click? Examples include:

• Proximity clicks: Clicks near the top corners of an ad when a user intended to close it
• Hasty clicks: Clicks directed out of the app that returned in less than five seconds
• Auto-clicks: Clicks detected without users touching the screen

When a developer has visibility into the true nature of clicks, they can filter out misleading interactions and gain insights into the quality and relevancy of an ad. This will impact whether a developer keeps or turns off a particular ad.

What’s more, a high QCTR highlights which creatives are performing well for advertisers in your game, serving as a valuable source of inspiration for generating your own creatives. 

Once a developer has assessed these KPIs, they should set guidelines for what constitutes optimal ad quality and then set up notifications – at least three KPIs for content monitoring and three for user experience monitoring – to get alerted if a KPI crosses the threshold.

By diving into these ad quality metrics, developers can actively improve the ad experience for their users, safeguard their app’s reputation, and unlock stronger performance and revenue. Improving how you monitor and manage the ads served in your game doesn’t just benefit the bottom line – it helps reinforce player trust and loyalty.