For years, we’ve watched digital advertising shift in a definitive direction: more creative, more testing, more insights. We went from building one ad and measuring its performance to building three. Then 10. Then 50. And we’ve learned a great deal in the process. From a Zynga standpoint, though, one question stood out: How do we […]
Most mobile games live and fade inside the App Store, topping the download charts for a season before the next release takes their place, and few leave a mark on the culture beyond the screen. Racing franchises have long been an exception, the kind of games people grow up with and keep playing for years. […]
Mobile gaming commands enormous consumer attention, yet that attention hasn’t always converted into proportional ad dollars. As evolving privacy standards rewrite how digital targeting works, the distance between engagement and investment only widens as brands raise their standard of proof, seeking to verify exactly who is seeing their ads before spending real money to reach […]
Hyundai has spent more than two decades building one of the deepest football sponsorship portfolios in the auto industry, including World Cup partnerships, club deals, on-the-ground activations, and brand ambassadors. This month, that portfolio gained a new venue. Top Eleven, the football management game from Nordeus (a Zynga studio), is hosting the Hyundai NEXT Cup […]
When LinkedIn rolled out daily puzzle games like Pinpoint, Queens, and Crossclimb to its 1.2 billion members in 2024 and saw 86 percent of players come back the next day, it offered a glimpse into how professional adults behave. When they’re not working, they’re playing games. For marketers, it’s a bit of a plot twist. The […]
If you have a banner line item in your media plan, there is a good chance you approved it without a second thought and handed it to the algorithm. Harry Wilkins, who leads Zynga’s programmatic sales, knows this because he sees it constantly. He also knows what it’s costing you and why the fix is […]
Zynga has always known its players aren’t just gamers. They’re binge-watchers, reality TV devotees, and pop culture obsessives who happen to also spend a solid chunk of their day inside a mobile game. For Alexa Grandolfo, Zynga’s Director of Communications, that overlap was the spark behind the company’s most ambitious brand partnership yet, bringing Survivor’s […]
As one of the world’s leading mobile game publishers, Zynga approaches advertising the same way they do their games: collaboratively, iteratively, and with the player experience at its core. By uniting audience insights with deep-rooted knowledge in game development, the company is helping brands break through a crowded digital landscape with work that feels native […]
As media budgets tighten and accountability rises, advertisers are confronting an uncomfortable truth. Attention is harder to earn and increasingly disconnected from real influence. Impressions alone no longer tell the story. What matters is whether a message reaches the people who actually make purchasing decisions. One of the clearest disconnects sits in mobile gaming. Despite […]
For years, advertising optimized for attention. Things like views and seconds watched. But attention no longer signals interest, let alone impact. Audiences scroll, mute, and ignore messages with ease. Active participation, by contrast, is intentional. It requires choice, effort, and motivation. That shift is forcing the industry to confront an uncomfortable truth. Much of what’s […]
At Zynga, we’ve watched the media landscape evolve rapidly, and it’s clear that attention is fragmented. People are no longer just watching TV or scrolling on their phones, but doing both at the same time. That’s why we believe mobile gaming and CTV are actually complementary channels. To break down the trend, we spoke with […]
For advertisers, attention has become a scarce resource. Mobile users scroll through feeds, skip pre-rolls, and tune out static messages. Yet one category consistently earns real engagement: mobile gaming. In an environment where players choose to participate, marketers have a rare chance to hold focus and move consumers through the middle of the funnel. Our […]
When creative teams start swinging too big, it’s often because they’ve lost sight of the fundamentals. At its core, advertising is meant to deliver results without compromising the audience’s experience. When teams fall too deeply in love with their own ideas, the work starts chasing recognition instead of KPIs, and creative ambition overtakes strategic purpose. […]
When I tell people that mobile gamers are a dream audience for financial brands, I sometimes get raised eyebrows. There’s still this stereotyped image of a gamer as a teenager holed up in a basement in front of a console. But that picture is decades old. Today’s mobile gamers are, well, everyone. The people making […]