With the introduction of the new ad manager and sponsor system, there have been many pros and cons. The main problem is the inability of the new sponsor system to provide a consistent and predictable CCU over the duration of the ad campaign.
Given that the new system uses bidding to determine which sponsors are shown, it seems confusing that a sponsor generally will not win bids for hours on end until it wins thousands of bids in one instance. This leads to spikes (hundreds to thousands) in CCU which is detrimental for both players and developers alike.
Massive spikes in CCU accompanied by virtually no in-flow of users leads to hundreds of new servers being created to accommodate the peak CCU, but then, as users gradually leave the game, it leads to each server shrinking down to small sizes. Eventually, you have a significant number of nearly empty servers which affects playability for users currently in the game and new users who join these small servers that take longer to fill up due to the abundance of available servers.
Overall, a rework of the sponsor system to provide a more stable and consistent player count to the games over the course of the ad campaign is necessary. It is important for new games in particular who don’t naturally have another source of user acquisition.