Unity is shutting the ironSource ad network. A 30-day migration checklist for buyers

Unity confirmed this week that the ironSource Ads network will shut down effective April 30. The company is also exploring a sale of the Supersonic publishing label and says it is redirecting focus to Unity Vector, the ad model that took over as the growth engine of Unity's Grow segment. Unity disclosed separately that Grow had its best month ever in January, up 72% year on year, which is presumably part of the case for concentrating resources there rather than running two ad businesses in parallel.

For buyers who have been running spend through ironSource, that leaves a little over a month to move before the network stops serving. The instinct in a situation like this is to treat it as a straightforward budget reallocation, moving the same dollar amount to whichever network is next in the media plan. That undersells the work. ironSource carried its own audience mix and its own creative specs, and it carried its own attribution wiring too; none of the three transfers on its own, so each needs a deliberate replacement. Here's a working sequence.

Week one: audit and export your ironSource line

Pull a full export now. Campaign history, creative assets, audience segments, all of it, and not in the final week. Note which campaigns and placements are unique to ironSource and which creative sets already run in parallel on other networks, since the second group is a much easier lift. Ask your MMP how it will handle ironSource-attributed installs once the network stops sending postbacks, and get that answer in writing rather than assuming continuity.

Week two: pick the landing spots

Don't default to a single replacement network. Unity Vector is the obvious internal successor and worth testing, but ironSource's demand mix doesn't map one to one onto any other network, so spreading reallocated budget across two or three networks during the transition limits the damage if one of them underperforms the old baseline. Prioritise networks where you already have live campaigns and clean measurement; standing up a brand new integration from scratch inside a five-week window adds risk you don't need.

Week three: migrate creative and re-test

Move your top-performing ironSource creative to the new networks' spec requirements rather than assuming the same files will drop in cleanly. Budget time for a genuine testing period, even a compressed one, before you shift meaningful spend. A creative set that performed well on ironSource's demand mix won't automatically perform the same way against a different network's auction dynamics.

Week four: reconcile and hold a contingency line

By the last week before shutdown, your reporting should already show the new networks absorbing volume, not just the old one declining. Keep a contingency budget line unassigned rather than fully committing it to the first replacement that shows promise, because early results over a short window are noisy, and a network that looks strong on day three of a test can regress once its own delivery algorithm has had more of your data to work with.

Watch the Supersonic sale process too. Unity has said only that it is exploring a sale, not that anyone has agreed one, so treat any change in ownership as a live variable rather than a settled fact. If Supersonic changes hands, the publishing and demand picture buyers are migrating into could shift again within the same quarter, which is one more reason not to over-commit to a single replacement network this early.

The deadline won't move. The quality of the migration will, and the teams that treat this as a re-platforming project rather than a line-item change are the ones who'll settle it over the coming five weeks.

Related archive reading

These articles provide related context and remain subject to their stated review status.

• Operating brief: reallocating spend after a network exits
• Unity Vector: What Its New AI Ad Model Changes for Buyers