Zenni Optical is leaning into AI and mobile inventory to transform in-game advertising from a brand lift play into a precision growth channel.
Zenni has teamed up with gaming organization Ghost Gaming and the ad tech company Digital Culture Group for a new advertising campaign that largely focused on mobile gaming inventory within Ghost Gaming’s portfolio. The campaign, which ran for the month of February, allowed the eyeglass brand to achieve a cost-per-unique-user (CPUU) rate of only $0.02, according to numbers shared by a Digital Culture Group representative. During the campaign, Zenni achieved a 30-percent lift in sales month-over-month.
“I have never seen that before in my 20 years of advertising experience,” said DCG founder and head of partnerships Crystal Foote, who described the $0.02 CPUU cost as 96 percent lower than industry benchmarks in an interview with GamesBeat. “I mean, not even social media can give me that efficient of a cost per unique user.”
The February advertising campaign represents the latest expression of Zenni’s ongoing partnership with Ghost Gaming, which the partners originally announced in January 2024. It largely took the form of in-game ads inside mobile games, such as a virtual billboard advertising Zenni and Ghost Gaming inside SimCity. To grow the scale and reach of the partnership, the companies brought DCG into the mix in a bid to expand their unique reach among gamers in the much-desired 18-to-34 demographic and drive new customer growth for both Zenni and Ghost Gaming.
“We hadn’t done performance-based marketing, and so we looked for what we thought was the strongest partner to help lift our brand, and that’s where this came about,” said Ghost Gaming CEO Todd Harris in an interview with GamesBeat. “And I think it’s a template that could work for other brands as well, especially if you have a foundation that’s strong in the industry.”
Digital Culture Group’s involvement in Zenni’s February gaming campaign injected a healthy dose of artificial intelligence into the mix, with DCG analyzing live data signals using the Audience Resonance Index (ARI), its proprietary AI tool, as well as “PowerUp,” ARI’s dedicated gaming module. It was ARI’s insights that informed the campaign’s focus on Ghost’s mobile gaming inventory.
“We put that RFP through ARI and said, ‘wait a minute, the majority of your audience are mobile, casual gamers’ — which aligns with the audience wearing eyewear, because you have a screen in your face,” Foote said.