Brands can now purchase ads in and around games directly through Canva.
Today, Sept. 8, the gaming tech and media company Livewire launched the Canva App Marketplace’s first-ever gaming integration. Now, users who create designs in Canva can more easily turn them into ads inside gaming inventory, with the ability to select their preferred format, target audience, and budget and preview their ads within real gaming environments.
Ahead of today’s announcement, Livewire and Canva soft-launched the Ads by Livewire feature on Sept. 3. Rates for self-serve campaigns processed through the tool start at $500, with a $100 bonus available for new customers’ first orders within two months of launch. At launch, campaigns can run in two formats — in-game billboards and interstitial banners — with more to come in early 2027, per a press release. The rollout will start with mobile inventory, then move into PC and console games, according to Livewire co-founder and co-CEO Indy Khabra in an interview with GamesBeat.
“In this space, you do need to understand the ecosystem to navigate it, and we literally remove that complexity by doing this with Canva,” Khabra said. “You don’t need the relationship directly with the publisher; you don’t have to access programmatic buying platforms. You create your ad, and you can activate it within safe, premium environments, and you can do that with a single workflow.”
Khabra said Canva’s Ads by Livewire integration has been in the works for a year, stemming from a meeting between Livewire and Canva in September 2025. He said one of the main goals of the partnership was to bring new brands and advertisers into the gaming ecosystem by increasing the accessibility of advertising in and around games, flagging Canva’s user base of over 265 million people and open ecosystem involving advertising partners like Meta, Tiktok, and LinkedIn.
“The barrier of entry is focused for large advertisers, and with Canva, we’ve basically built a model where a local business spending $500 can actually run ads within gaming,” Khabra said.
Alongside its Canva integration, Livewire is sponsoring the Canva World Tour, next month’s upcoming annual educational event intended to help users grow their expertise with the platform’s tools. This year’s edition of the World Tour will feature a dedicated video teaching audiences how to turn their Canva designs into gaming ads.
“As much as we are excited about building our application and having integrated with Canva, Canva is also seeing a great opportunity for us to co-market the opportunities,” Khabra said.
Khabra told GamesBeat that Livewire has additional advertising platform partners planned for the future, with the goal of further widening the pool of brands interested in spending their ad dollars on gaming inventory. To help power this vision, Livewire recently hired the gaming advertising veterans Zach Hahn and Ryan Dow. Hahn, who joined Livewire as the company’s executive vice president of North American sales in June, formerly served as a sales executive at Super League Gaming; Dow, who took a role as Livewire’s executive vice president of strategic partnerships at around the same time, previously helped expand the gaming business at Sportfive.
“it’s an exciting group, and we have the same bench strength in all of our markets,” Khabra said. “We’re innovating, bringing new products to the market, and our existing work is growing.”