Zynga Starts Selling Sponsored Levels Created by In-House Agency
Zynga is looking to level up in-game advertising.
The gaming company behind the “FarmVille” and “Words With Friends” franchises has developed a new ad product called Sponsored Play that inserts branded levels into its games that people can play like they would a normal level. It’s the first ad format created by Zynga’s in-house agency Studio E, which was formed earlier this year as part of the company’s push to attract more advertisers in order to subsidize its largely free games.
“When we think of Sponsored Play, it really is product placement at scale,” said Zynga’s VP-Sales Julie Shumaker. “It’s the mechanism by which our great game designers can now focus on brand KPIs within a native environment of the game to build engagement experiences specifically on behalf of the brand that reward the player.” (KPIs are jargon for key performance indicators.)
