Dive Brief:

• Game developer Zynga has partnered with Rubicon Project to make all of its direct-sold inventory available programmatically.
• The programmatic offering includes premium formats such as "sponsored play" and "gamified units."
• The key benefit for Rubicon Project is the exclusive deal gives its exchange access to a unique audience unavailable anywhere else.

Dive Insight:

Julie Shumaker, Zynga’s VP of global sales, told Ad Exchanger, "The top brands that are willing to take the time and energy and money to create high-quality, high-value ad experiences also happen to make the better experiences for the players."

She added that Zynga’s users preferred longer ads that offered 48 hours of ad-free play rather than ads that were shorter but appeared more frequently. The deal with Rubicon allows the game company to sell those ad units preferred by its users, and give brands higher performance at the same time. It’s actually becoming a more common marketing ploy to essentially bribe users to view ads by offering free time in mobile games in exchange for watching the ad.

With ad tech firms under fire from investors, even cutting back on hiring overall in the sector in Q4 2015, the deal gives Rubicon an asset in an SSP environment where most publishers are offering inventory to multiple exchanges.

"A big focus for us has been working with publishers to get exclusive access to the inventory, to make sure the buy side is incentivized," Joe Prusz, head of mobile for Rubicon Project, told Ad Exchanger.

He added, "We became the fastest-growing of SSP companies [early on] because we had the most exclusive relationships with the comScore 500, and that’s why we had more buyers accessing our inventory."