• by Colin Kirkland , 6 hours ago

Game developer Zynga is looking to bridge the gap between advertisers and developers and is working with PubMatic to do it.

The new partnership aims to create a direct pathway between advertisers and the large mobile gaming community, backed by a variety of measurement and ad-buying tools.

“Mobile gaming audiences are among the most engaged in digital media, yet buyers have lacked the tools to reach them with the creative quality and performance outcomes the channel deserves,” says Lashanne Phang, vice president of PubMatic's mobile division.

By partnering with a leading mobile game developer, PubMatic hopes it can use its proprietary technology and agency partnerships to evolve ad experiences for buyers looking to target audiences among Zynga’s 200 million users who are actively playing mobile games.

Through PubMatic's “OpenWrap” software development kit (SDK), creative format capability, like its “Click to Cart” feature, advertisers will have various commerce-driven ways to deliver in-game promotions.

PubMatic's “AgenticOS and Activate” direct-to-supply media activation platform also invites advertisers to experiment with programmatic AI-powered buying workflows and analytic insights when targeting Zynga's wide-reaching gaming audience.

According to a recent report from Appsflyer, gaming app user acquisition spend continues to increase across the globe, reaching $25 billion in 2025. While spending on gaming apps in the U.S. alone have grown 42% over the past year, with mobile games representing 8.1% of total U.S. app spend.

However, although there are 3.4 billion games worldwide, with global ad spend within games projected to hit $131 billion this year -- driven heavily by mobile games -- total gaming ad investment captures less than 5% of global digital media spend.

Despite similar audience sizes, shopping apps currently attract twice as much ad spend as gaming,” PubMatic and Zynga's announcement notes. “The gap signals a clear opportunity: mobile gaming delivers mass reach and high engagement but has yet to capture proportional full-funnel investment from advertisers.”

“Marketing success depends on how effectively teams can measure, interpret, and act on an increasing volume of fragmented signals,” Adam Smart, director of product and gaming at Appsflyer said earlier this year.

Introducing its significant mobile gaming audience to advertisers via PubMatic's ad platform, Zynga's head of programmatic and agency relations Corentin Leydis says that the company's focus “remains simple” in that it hopes to deliver a premium gaming environment to a variety of players who can be reached directly by advertisers.