Mobile games are often ripe for programmatic advertising. But the mobile ad space has been rocked over the past few years, as Apple and others have cracked down brands on tracking consumers across different apps.
Zynga has found gamer behavior to be a viable alternative solution.
“I think mobile has the most traditional ad opportunities for brands,” said Gabrielle Heyman, head of global brand partnerships at Zynga. “I don’t think measurement is difficult in the mobile space.”
In fact, Zynga employs a fairly simply, traditional approach to targeting. As mobile identity signals become less available the company has found classic ways to segment its users by gaming behavior. “Different co-horts are playing different games,” she said.
Specifically, Zynga has found that affluent men tend to play sports titles, while “hypercasual” games correspond with the younger TikTok audience. Brains and puzzle games reach parents and older adults. L’Oreal recently executed a successful custom campaign via several Zynga hypercasual games, without needing any user-targeting data.
“We often find that behavioral targeting will often perform better,” she said.
