flaskManaging Holdout Users

This section explains how Metica’s integration works alongside your game’s ad logic, and how to handle holdout users correctly.

Understanding Holdout Users

A holdout is a user who does not receive Metica-optimized ads. Instead, they continue to see ads through your game’s default AppLovin MAX setup. Holdout users are selected randomly and represent a small percentage of your audience.

Why Holdouts Are Important

Holdout users play a critical role in both measuring performance and improving system accuracy:

Measure Performance Uplift

Holdout users act as a control group. By comparing their results to those receiving Metica’s optimizations, you can clearly see the added value Metica brings to your ad monetization.

Improve Learning and Optimization

By analyzing data from both holdout and optimized users, Metica is able to refine its models more quickly. This leads to better predictions, stronger default strategies, and improved results, especially during early rollout phases or when onboarding new games.

What You Need to Do

During initialization, your game will receive a flag:

IsMeticaAdsEnabled = true means use Metica’s logic.

IsMeticaAdsEnabled = false means the user is in holdout and should get your standard MAX ad flow.

Handling this correctly ensures accurate testing, better results, and faster learning.

Code Sample

The IsMeticaAdsEnabled flag is a boolean variable that determines whether a specific user will receive ads optimized by Metica's AI or will be part of a holdout group receiving ads directly through the standard AppLovin MAX SDK. This flag is set during the SDK initialization and is used to A/B test the revenue performance of Metica's ad optimization against the baseline performance of the MAX SDK.

Important: MeticaAds.InitializeAsync() must be called BEFORE initializing the AppLovin MAX SDK to ensure proper integration.

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