Chef Town playable ad
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Mnectar gathers momentum for ‘playable ads’

Mnectar created “playable ads,” and people are playing them. The company says it is constantly picking up new advertising customers, and players are clicking on more and more ads.

The San Francisco company creates ads for mobile games that consumers can actually play if they tap on the ad. Mnectar uses virtualization technology to stream a game directly to the user, who can control and play it for about 30 seconds or a minute. No downloads are necessary to try it out, and the result is that the player knows right away if they like the game or not.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.