What is a creative?
A creative is an individual ad asset, such as an image, video, or playable, that must pass moderation (pending, approved, or rejected) before it can run in a campaign.
It’s the actual content a player sees, distinct from the ad unit or placement that delivers it.
What are types of creatives?
A creative can take several forms, each suited to a different moment in the player's experience. Unity's own ad formats cover every type below:
Rewarded video: An ad where the player opts in and receives an in-game reward for watching.
Playable: An ad that lets the player try a short piece of gameplay before installing.
Banner: A static or animated ad, typically shown at the top or bottom of the screen.
Interstitial: A full-screen interstitial ad shown at a natural break, such as between levels.
For design guidance on building creatives in any of these formats, see Unity’s own best practices for designing ad creatives.
Creative vs. creative pack
A creative and a creative pack get used interchangeably, but Unity's own ads dashboard and documentation treat them as two distinct things:
How are creatives moderated?
Every creative goes through a human moderation process before it can go live, checked against content, technical, and device-compatibility requirements. A creative starts as pending, then becomes approved or rejected; a rejected creative needs to be fixed and resubmitted.
See Unity’s own creative moderation checks for the full technical and content requirements.
How are creatives used?
In Unity Ads campaigns, creatives are grouped into creative packs and tested against each other to see which drives the best results. Which combination wins often depends on genre. For instance, casual game studios have found that video-plus-playable end cards can outperform video-plus-static.
Unity's own Ad Design Studio also uses AI to speed up creative iteration, generating new variations in minutes rather than days.