Anzu, an advertising technology built for video games, has announced it is extending its formats and inventory beyond gaming environments, enabling advertisers to run full-funnel campaigns to reach the same audience wherever they show up.
Building on it’s understanding of it, and the technology behind it, Anzu now extends into other categories, supporting standard ad formats across multiple mobile app verticals alongside its intrinsic clickable and non-clickable in-game formats, consolidating ad units inside one platform.
For advertisers, the move means aiming to activate audiences at scale, leveraging their journey across gaming and non-gaming screens, with more formats and touchpoints through a single platform.
“Gamers don’t stop being gamers when they close the game — and now, neither does Anzu,” said Itamar Benedy, Anzu’s co-founder and CEO, in a press release.
“This audience was never just a gaming audience, they’re one of the biggest, most diverse and engaged audiences online, and we’re built to reach gamers wherever they are. The same person moves between a game and everything else on their phone in one session. Advertisers can now extend to reach them across far more of their day and through more meaningful touchpoints.”
For app publishers, the extension opens up access to incremental revenue, supported by more diverse brand and agency demand and a wider mix of ad formats, integrated their way through both SDK and SDK-less options. Mobile game publishers gain the same flexibility, with more formats and more ways to integrate.
“Gaming has matured from a niche media buy into a core part of how brands build their omnichannel strategies. What changes with Anzu’s extension is that gaming no longer sits in its own silo — the same audience, the same measurement, and the same full-funnel activation now extend across gaming and beyond it. That’s the kind of channel convergence brand marketers have been asking for,” said Stephan Pretorius, chief technology officer at WPP, in the same press release.
Gaming remains one of the most effective ways to reach a mainstream, mass-appeal audience. 62% of the online population play games, and most younger consumers now identify as gamers: 90% of Gen Z and 84% of Millennials, according to Deloitte. This expansion extends the ways advertisers can reach that audience across the funnel.