Loading summary
Transcript89 lines
- [00:00]
Gabrielle Heyman
Foreign. Welcome to Ad Exchanger Talks, the podcast devoted to examining the issues and trends in advertising and marketing technology that matter most to you.
- [00:25]
Sarah Sluice
This episode is sponsored by Amazon Ads. Amazon Ads offers a range of products and solutions that can help businesses achieve their advertising goals. Advertising needs a world where marketers no longer have to choose between building their brand and driving results. Amazon Ads helps marketers prioritize solutions that break down silos and simplify campaign management, enabling the orchestration, execution and measurement of holistic campaigns that achieve both objectives. We remove the guesswork for advertisers by making it simple to manage all of their TV planning and buying. And with Amazon Ads. I'm Alison Schiff and you're listening to Ad Exchanger Talks for my guest this week. Gaming is serious business. As in gaming is her business. Gabrielle Heyman is the VP of Global brand Sales and Partnerships at Zynga, one of the largest mobile game developers in the world. Gabby's been at zynga for nearly 13 years, so she knows what's what. And she also wishes that brands knew what's what. For example, why are brand marketers still so reticent to spend in games? It's not as if the audiences aren't there. So hey, let's talk about it. Hey Gabby, welcome to the podcast.
- [01:46]
Gabrielle Heyman
Thank you. Happy to be here.
- [01:49]
Sarah Sluice
I love your background, by the way. I love, love reading. I'm a book person and so all I want to do is zoom in and judge you by all the books you have on your shelf, but I can't see what they are from here.
- [02:00]
Gabrielle Heyman
Right. I know. Maybe I'll take like a little screenshot and zoom in. It's funny because this is all of me back here. Like there's. And I decided to be authentically me. So there's everything from like Crystal Healing to noir to like religion to whatever philosophy. But I just.
- [02:23]
Sarah Sluice
Well, I was going to ask you what's one thing about you that not a lot of other people already know? Maybe it's your eclectic book tastes, but what else? What's one other thing?
- [02:34]
Gabrielle Heyman
One other thing? Well, I was actually in a band in my 20s and I play guitar and sang and did some, you know, I used to do like live mic at the Kibis Room, which is next to Cantors. If you are from la, that's like a classic place to do that at. And I took guitar lessons and Shiro, my guitar teacher, asked me to be in his band. So I did that for a little bit. It was fun. But ultimately I'm too responsible to Go that route. And my voice wasn't that good. Really. Let's call it the voice was not that good.
- [03:09]
Sarah Sluice
That's still so cool though. What was the name of the band?
- [03:14]
Gabrielle Heyman
Well, the, his band didn't really. I never fully gelled in that band. They. So it just like we just. I don't even remember what the name of that band was, but my band was called the Hussies.
- [03:28]
Sarah Sluice
Oh yes.
- [03:29]
Gabrielle Heyman
My little side thing that I did outside of him, I went through a phase, you know, of doing this like after work, after I was an assistant at CBS plus and I would go and practice and then eat late night food and get up really early and.
- [03:45]
Sarah Sluice
You know, just like work by day, jam with the Hussies by night. Exactly. So I, I have to ask, before we get into some of the nitty gritty about Zynga ads, are you a gamer? Do you play games yourself?
- [03:59]
Gabrielle Heyman
I do play games myself.
- [04:01]
Sarah Sluice
Yeah.
- [04:01]
Gabrielle Heyman
I play a lot of games and I play all, all kinds of games. And the more I think about games, the more I love games actually. And, and not only mobile games or console games, just, you know, backgammon games around the table with my family. Like we love playing spades, we love playing board games. We love games. And I've been playing them since I was a kid.
- [04:27]
Sarah Sluice
I learned Settlers of Catan for the first time this weekend. I made it to the age of 42 without ever playing. It's so good. It's really fun.
- [04:38]
Gabrielle Heyman
I love it. Yeah, my boyfriend plays it like the mobile version and we have the board game version. And I feel like it takes a long time to set it up and then like there's this learning curve you have to do.
- [04:51]
Sarah Sluice
It took three hours to play this game, but I was trading stone and sheep by the end, like a champ. I lost.
- [04:57]
Gabrielle Heyman
So you're a gamer too?
- [04:59]
Sarah Sluice
Well, I don't really play mobile games. I used to, but I do play a lot of IRL games. I play Mahjong and a few different versions of it. So American style. And I recently learned Hong Kong style mahjong. And what I like about it most is that it's social. And a lot of games that you guys have are social too, right? I mean, Words with Friends, the classic. That's a very social game.
- [05:26]
Gabrielle Heyman
Yeah, absolutely.
- [05:27]
Sarah Sluice
But let's, let's talk a little bit about what Zynga has under its umbrella because you guys have a lot of stuff. It's more than 150 game titles. Everything from Farmville, which is still a thing, Words with Friends that I just mentioned Zanga Poker, merged Dragons, Toon Blast, Harry Potter Puzzles and Spel. Like I can't name them all because that would be the whole podcast episode. And it really is a mix. There's originals, there are the big franchise games, licensed title, social puzzle, casino racing, adventure, all of that stuff. Billions of downloads, 175 countries, something like that. It's, it's pretty vast. And yet somehow it seems like a lot of marketers still don't get why this is an important audience to get in front of. It just kind of feels like a version of the year of mobile vibes. Like every year I hear gaming companies get on stages at events and talk about how brands really need to spend more money with games because it's a great way to get in front of engaged audiences. But for whatever reason, it's also like Back to the Future, you know, it just doesn't seem to be resonating, even though it's so logical. So why is that? What's up with that?
- [06:46]
Gabrielle Heyman
That's the question of the millennia. Right? Because I've been doing this a long time and honestly it's been the same because the precursor to mobile games were web games and they were also casual games and they also had huge reach. And so it's been quite a long time that ad spend in gaming isn't commensurate with time spent in gaming or like the scale. You know, there's 3.2 ish billion gamers worldwide and in America, I don't know the numbers, you know, 185 million, 200 million. It depends on like what you're looking at, but the audience is there. And I think more and more brands are spending in gaming and I think there's actually a lot of disruption right now where like classic ad networks that had a majority of gaming ad spend. Right. I'm talking, you know, obviously Applovin generates a lot of the demand in the supply path of mobile gaming. But you know, anything from Unity to Digital Turbine to et cetera, are having a larger percent share of brand spending. It is increasing. But I think there's a lot of different reasons why they're dipping their toes and not diving in. And that's how I like to put it. And you know, one thing Terry Kawaja from Luma says, which I think makes so much sense, is that ad buyers, chief investment officers, like people that grew up when I started out, like where TV was the majority of spend, it's really easy to move your know, linear spend to CTV or your terrestrial radial Radio spend to audio like digital audio, podcasting, et cetera and even you know, out of home and digital out of home are not mind shattering. But games sort of falls in the middle. Gaming is everywhere and then in a way its own media channel and it's every media channel and its own media channel because it has video, it has, you know, video, it even has audio. Like it has E Commerce, it has anything that it has display. So anything that you would sort of find in any on CTV or on Social, like gaming has a lot of it too. But it's also very unique in the type of experience. It's interactive entertainment.
- [09:21]
Sarah Sluice
So who are gamers? Obviously you. I mean I know the audience is majority female people in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s. I mean these are people that brands want to reach. It's moms, it's people buying for families, it's people with income, they spend a lot of time. So yeah, I mean who but who are these people more than just those demos that I rattled off?
- [09:48]
Gabrielle Heyman
Yeah, well I mean, you know, if.
- [09:51]
Sarah Sluice
You.
- [09:54]
Gabrielle Heyman
Take like a couple of steps back, right, and look at the gaming ecosystem, there's console, there's PC, there's mobile and mobile is around half of the market. So it's larger than console's contribution or PC's contribution. There's this stereotype that the gamers this teen boy in the basement. And it's stereotypical even for me to stay the stereotype I feel because I've been in the space for so long.
- [10:20]
Sarah Sluice
Yeah, it's kind of like saying right time, right place, right moment or something, you know, like you just can't say that anymore because it's so like cheesy and has been said so many times.
- [10:30]
Gabrielle Heyman
But the truth is that's what the media plan looks like in gaming a lot. The media plan in gaming looks like reaching the teen boy in the basement.
- [10:38]
Sarah Sluice
Right.
- [10:38]
Gabrielle Heyman
Or like that gen Alpha young Gen Z. And that's because it is harder to find those people in other media channels than they are in gaming and droves. But the average age of the gamer across the platforms is way older than people think. It's like mid to late 30s. And then when you drill it further down into mobile, which Zynga is Teju's mobile game studio, that's what we focus on. A lot of mobile games are casual games and casual games, which is very Zynga strong suit is like 75% female. So Zynga is around 60% female male. You know, when you have 150 games made by 12 game studios, like some of the games you make definitely have a majority male audience. Like CSR2, which is a car racing game, or Zynga Poker, which is like a classic. We just expanded it from this mobile game for what, 15 years old or older into PC. Like we're growing that game still and that's more male. But the other games like the Match Threes, the Toy Boss, the two Blast, the Match Factory, Color Block Jam, some of our like latest biggest hits are these really great like puzzle games that women love, you know.
- [11:56]
Sarah Sluice
Well then why does the myth persist of this basement dwelling, hoodie wearing teenager who also does exist? Right? Like someone does want to market to this person, but that is such a stereotype. So I almost feel bad hating on him because he buys Doritos like he buys Mountain Dew. But, but yeah, the gamer myth, like why do advertisers seem predisposed to just misunderstanding the gaming audience? Just on and on.
- [12:21]
Gabrielle Heyman
Yeah, that's a great question. I think that brands are beginning to. It's. Let's. Here's the thing is the sweet spot is like the millennial Gen X woman. And this millennial Gen X woman is this powerhouse of the economy basically is really running the consumer economy in so many ways because women globally make 70, 80% of purchasing decisions and that's common in most countries. And they're buying for themselves, their kids, their spouses, their partners, their parents, their friends. It's actually really interesting how women not only draw the like consumer heart of the economy, but we make 70% of health care decisions for our families in the U.S. you know. And now even when you look at what's happening through society, the majority of college enroll of college students are women. So women play a really vital role for advertisers, I think. You know, I've talked actually just recently I met with Jenny Mass from Variety and she published this article from a conversation we had about how like the ad spenders that are targeting women on like Bravo or Halmark or Lifetime, those are a lot of the same women that are playing casual games and reaching them in casual gaming environment. It's just different. We talk a lot about actually the, the elephant room in the room for CTV buyers, which is that when you're sitting watching TV like you have your phone right next to you.
- [14:02]
Sarah Sluice
Oh, totally.
- [14:03]
Gabrielle Heyman
And a lot of the time you're playing your game while you're watching tv, but there's actually a way to make the two things very complimentary to each other. And that's if you can't beat Them join them. That's. But it's actually true in the facts too. Like it's not us or them, it's. It's both really.
- [14:22]
Sarah Sluice
It's acknowledging reality. So you're not trying to shape behaviors as much as you're trying to adapt to behaviors. And that's how people behave when they're consuming entertainment. So you might as well do something that makes sense to the experience that they want to have and that they're already having.
- [14:37]
Gabrielle Heyman
Exactly.
- [14:39]
Sarah Sluice
Well, how, how are you correcting those misconceptions about the audience and finally changing some hearts and minds and getting more brands to open their wallets? Like what arguments are resonating beyond the ones that we just. Which you think would resonate greatly? It's the right audience, people are in the right mindset, they have money to spend. Those all seem like pretty compelling arguments, but you've been having to make them over and over again so. But what's working?
- [15:05]
Gabrielle Heyman
Yeah, and there's a lot more arguments that I could say on that regard too. But just. And because I want. Before we like walk away from that audience story, what I do think is interesting is gamers across the board, but also mobile gamers and also female mobile gamers and male mobile gamers. Because really mobile gamers is where people go when they don't have time for console anymore. It's like the grown up gaming. We used to have a slogan around like video games for grownups because like that's basically what it is. But they also tend to be very like tech savvy more into using mobile to arrange their finances. Fintech more likely to buy mobile app than others. So like they're very much an attractive audience I think in terms of, you know, there is this thing in advertising that I am passionate about which is somehow sometimes things that we buy as marketers we're not looking at the facts or. And so we choose a path because it's what we think that you know, like there used to be this bias that oh, if you get, if you land on someone when they're a youth, they're going to be loyal and brand loyal and buy you later. And I think that's a lot of the strategy that brands have in going into games. When you see Gucci and Roblox, like no kid is buying Gucci but they're there not to reach the mom because I don't play. None of us play Roblox. They're there to like infiltrate future spend. The irony is that Gucci actually has one of the most like Aging target audiences. So why are they not going where the folks are that actually buy them, love them, and can grow their market share? We just are looking, we're looking into generational studies too. And you know, like, Gen X is one of the. Is like the biggest spending generation right now. Like, I have to deep dive in the study that was just said to me. But so, but yet, you know, my partners at agencies who focus on gaming for their major holding co rarely get an RFP or brand brief to reach millennial or Gen X women. So, you know, I think that that stumps me a little bit, and I would love to figure out how to circumvent that. But beyond that, I think what is very fascinating is the psychology behind gaming, like why people game and the kind of engagement, gamified experiences, drives and how beneficial that is for brand metrics. So that's the other part of it, because it's not just that people are playing games and they're getting rewarded ads from PNG for Tide and they. That makes people love Tide more and choose Tide when they go to the, you know, supermarket because PNG got them through this level of their game. Like, that is very powerful, but it's also gamifying the brand itself, which is very powerful. So we have a game studio internally called Studio E, and they make games for brands and. And they also actually make interactive, engaging media for brands. And so we've kind of grown from like, really specializing in games for brands to just doing interactive ads of varying types of formats. And in a gaming environment, it works really well because people are, like, used to touching and moving and going. But it also drives metrics, really, really important key metrics. So, you know, that's something that I'm very fascinated with. And growing, we're growing against that.
- [19:00]
Sarah Sluice
As you were talking, I was thinking, yeah, I do feel a little neglected as a geriatric millennial. That's the official term for someone in their early 40s.
- [19:10]
Gabrielle Heyman
Geriatric.
- [19:11]
Sarah Sluice
Geriatric millennial. A geriatric millennial.
- [19:15]
Gabrielle Heyman
Yeah.
- [19:16]
Sarah Sluice
And I've been writing about marketing and advertising for roughly 15 years. And I remember when I started, every pitch I got was about how important it was to reach millennials. Millennials. Millennials. What are millennials thinking? And now it's pretty much exclusively what are Gen Z thinking? And a little bit of Gen Alpha sprinkled in. And it's like, yeah, what about me? I buy things.
- [19:41]
Gabrielle Heyman
I agree. Well, I think that the, like, revenue will increase when you do that. I don't really. We had a Beauty brand who wanted to reach like, you know, older Gen Z, younger millennials. And we did really fun campaigns with them. But some of our research showed when we did the brand lift studies was that it was actually like the older millennial Gen X that had some of the metrics that move the most. And like, what's wrong with that? You know, I actually think that one thing that's really interesting also for people to learn for is how games have marketed themselves. And, you know, we game game user acquisition budget, which is just so much money is spent in the mobile industry. Really, so much of the money running through mobile apps is from other game publishers. And they're not really interested in demographics, they just are interested in gamers, you know, whether it really doesn't matter where you live, what your household income is or, you know, anything. Just. Just that. Which I think actually makes a lot of sense. And when I worked at buzzfeed, that was very much the philosophy of Jonah Peretti. I mean, I worked there a long time ago. Like, let's call it 15 years ago or 14, like at the beginning, I opened their LA office and he was like, you know, we just want things to go viral. We don't want to target things. We just. Whoever finds the listicle, we make. That was even like pre their video strategy. It was like listicles. Like, whoever finds listicle will want the listicle. So just figure, focus on the content. I actually. And that's also not to be going on and on, but like, I feel like every year at ces, when I'm listening to what are the marketers saying for this year, I feel like CES were like, this is what the vibe of the year is going to be. They're always like, media mix. Modeling is dead, demos is dead. And then they all still buy that way too. So not to complain. I don't want to complain. I'm so grateful for our advertising partner. Feel free. I really am grateful for them. And more and more of them are, like I said, dipping their toes in, which is great.
- [21:59]
Sarah Sluice
So one more question and then we're going to take a quick break, but I think we've pretty much established that it's worth reaching gaming audiences. But I want to get into what it actually takes to reach these audiences, the advertising experiences. Like, what sort of formats work best to capture attention, but also not annoy people and also adapt to that behavior that we were just talking about. The second screening.
- [22:25]
Gabrielle Heyman
Sounds good.
- [22:26]
Sarah Sluice
Oh, no, I want to do that now.
- [22:28]
Gabrielle Heyman
Oh, now, before we go on, then.
- [22:30]
Sarah Sluice
We'Ll hit the break?
- [22:30]
Gabrielle Heyman
Yeah, yeah. The formats. So the great thing about making great ad experiences when you work at a game company is you actually own the games. And so all of the learnings and knowledge that we have through all of these game studios are game studio for brands we call Studio E. They're privy to all of that information internally. They're really looked at as like another game studio for us. And so they have made, I mean I want to say like a hundred mechanics of different experiences based on the KPIs of what the brand is asking for. So basically I think when you're playing to level seven, mobile games are free to play. They're ad supported. Mobile games are ad supported medium. And just like any ad supported medium there's different formats in it. There's banners, there's rewarded video, there's display, there's interstitial video. And it's crazy to think that mobile banners are not even a standard IB format. You know, even a lot of brands don't even have interstitials within their standard creative toolbox. So sometimes there is a bit of an education. On the flip side, anything that you're running on like social media can be run in a game, so vertical video, those types of things. So that's really great. So I mean the, the best format in mobile gaming which CTV has begun to adopt for a little while now is rewarded video. That's the gold standard, right. And you can do a rewarded playable too. So you can do a rewarded interactive experience and a gamer that's not interruptive because it's completely opt in you choose to do it and number two, it gives a reward for once you do choose to do it. And that really creates a great brand halo. But that said, nothing is wrong with commercial breaks. We're about to take one right now. Right. So we also have non incentivized rewarded, you know, non rewarded breaks which are the interstitial video or display and and then the, in terms of all the like playables or interactive ads that we run them through both channels and they both do really well. And I think that if you, it is a complete myth, like that's one of the myths, you can't interrupt a gamer because if you can interrupt somebody watching any show, I mean I just finish the diplomat like it was riveting and like do you want to be broken up of the commercial in between? No. But maybe you want your stuff for free and that value exchange is worth it to people. It really depends on what the client wants and what I kind of think is that there's like two different paths. Like one is a more premium creative managed service, you know, either a programmatic guarantee or I.O. type of execution. Or you know, you're, you're getting the banners like through dlids and PMPs. And it's just about scale and efficiency. So there's two paths for buyers. And I think programmatic buyers are very savvy to, to gaming too, actually, because so much of the supply that is games game supply.
- [26:16]
Sarah Sluice
All right, well that actually teases up really well for the second half because I have some more questions about the rewarded video experience. I also want to talk a little bit about measurement and Zynga's own ad tech. So stick with us and we'll get.
- [26:31]
Gabrielle Heyman
Into all of that.
- [26:46]
Sarah Sluice
I'm Sarah Sluice, editorial director at Ad Exchanger, and I have with me here today Ludo Develant, the product marketing lead at Amazon Ads, our podcast sponsor this month. Hello, Ludo.
- [26:57]
Ludo Develant
Yes, hello. Thanks for having me.
- [26:59]
Sarah Sluice
So to start things off, what is the biggest opportunity right now for advertisers in the streaming TV market?
- [27:07]
Ludo Develant
Well, the biggest opportunity in my view is to remove the guesswork for marketers. When you think about it, swimming TV combines the best of both worlds. It's mass rich with precision and personalization. And with Amazon Ads, advertisers can achieve this personalization at scale by serving ads to specific audience based on viewer behavior while delivering broad reach. And this powerful combination helps maximize advertising impact and remove more importantly, wasted ad spend. And this is really critical because, you know, the ANA has estimated that marketer on average waste 36% of their budget through inefficient targeting, duplicative ad delivery over reliance on probabilistic audiences.
- [27:47]
Sarah Sluice
So streaming delivers that same mass reach people love with TV advertising, but less waste, more personalization. When advertisers consolidate their streaming TV investment with Amazon Ads, what happens?
- [28:02]
Ludo Develant
Well, I think there are two advantages to work with Amazon ads. I mean, first of all, Amazon Ad is the only DSP that has all premium streaming inventory under one roof. So of course we have prime video ads, which is our own property. But advertisers also have access now to all premium publishers, including Netflix, Disney, Roku and more. And the second advantage is that we power our advertising solutions through the Amazon Ads authenticated graph. This is a unique graph which is built on verified relationship and not model data. And so in the US we can reach 90% of household to help advertiser manage through unduplicated reach and frequency. And it's delivering great performance so for instance, with the same budget, advertiser can see on average 42% improvement in unique reach for their campaign with a reduction of 27% of frequency.
- [28:52]
Sarah Sluice
So we've got inventory and identity as the two unique pieces. So let's close with looking ahead. Where do you see advertising on streaming TV heading in the next few years?
- [29:04]
Ludo Develant
So I think streaming TV is really democratizing access to TV advertising. The barrier to entry are coming down with more self service options without minimum budget or year long commitment. So for instance, at Amazon we have Sponsored tv which is our self service streaming TV solution for businesses of any size with, without any commitment in terms of minimum budget. And the second driver is AI tools that make video advertising creation both accessible and also very affordable. And I think this means that small businesses who could never afford TV before will join the game. And all in all, I think we could go from thousands of advertisers to potentially millions of TV advertisers in the next few years, which will unleash a new golden era for creativity with more choice and more entertainment for consumer.
- [29:52]
Sarah Sluice
So we will be seeing more small advertisers entering the TV market using AI to create their ads. Totally agree with that prediction. Thank you Ludo. And thank you to Amazon Ads for supporting our podcasts.
- [30:05]
Ludo Develant
Thank you for having me.
- [30:22]
Sarah Sluice
All right, we're back. And before we get into it, I just need to share something because as established by my favorite question on this podcast, what's one thing about you that not a lot of other people already know? I love fun facts. So not to put you on the spot, but do you know why the company is called Zynga? I looked it up, so I know.
- [30:41]
Gabrielle Heyman
I do know why, because. Do you want to share why or shall I share?
- [30:45]
Sarah Sluice
No, you can. I'd love for you to do it.
- [30:48]
Gabrielle Heyman
So Zynga was our founder's dog, Mark Pincus, and it was spelled a little bit different, but Zynga is like an African goddess or something like that.
- [31:02]
Sarah Sluice
Swahili for warrior princess is Nzinga. And then it got shortened that.
- [31:09]
Gabrielle Heyman
And so, and you know, our logo is the silhouette of this dog Zynga. So he changed the spelling from Z I N G A to Z Y N G A. And dogs are a big part of our culture. Like most of our offices, you can bring dogs to them. The logo obviously has a dog on it. And so that dog actually Scotty Konigsberg, who is our chief Product officer, like he met that dog, hung out that dog. And that dog has mixed reviews in terms of how friendly it was, but it was, it was a bulldog and you know, sat in the office basically in the early days of Zynga. So. And I love that. That's like our name and our story. And dogs are man's best friend. I mean, I know we both have dogs, so we love dogs.
- [32:06]
Sarah Sluice
I do. My dog is on a walk right now, otherwise he'd probably be barking at nothing. So I have another question that's not related to what we were talking about necessarily before, but I'm just curious. I want to take a step back in time, not that far back in time. I mean, you've been with Zynga for a while, almost 13 years. So you have a really good purview. And you were there obviously when Take Two acquired Zynga in 2022, which was this huge deal, it was $12.7 billion. How did life change for you from a brand, sales and partnerships perspective after the acquisition? Because Zynga was big in its own right. But then you became part of this huge multi platform gaming like model and I'm just wondering how that impacted your approach.
- [32:54]
Gabrielle Heyman
Excuse me. You know, not too much has changed since we were acquired. I think that Zynga has made a lot of. Before we were acquired, we had acquired many different game publishers and our philosophy was to keep them autonomous, allow them to continue to have their culture and do what they do best. And then, you know, as part of central publishing, which is where monetization, excuse me, sits, is just to help them be the best that they can be with our shared learnings that we have across studio, across any subject matter, whether that's ad monetization or user acquisition, acquisition or central tech or central product, et cetera. And I think that Take 2 had the same philosophy about their labels. So 2K, Rockstar, sister labels, we are their mobile studio. If anything, it just made me prouder to sit aside such illustrious other game publishing powerhouses. Rockstar, obviously with GTA and 2K, with NBA 2K and so many other games that are all doing so well. And I think that the culture was very complementary between the two in a way. We're a California based company, they're New York based company. At first it felt a little bit like, whoa, the grownups are in the room. But because Zynga still had a lot of teenage spirit and it still sort of does, I gotta say things that were core to our philosophy that Mark Pincus instituted, like, you know, be your own CEO or make decisions at Zynga, speed, that type of philosophy which still, you know, Very much a meritocracy. It's still, still, even though we've evolved and shifted, it still does permeate through some of the DNA because so many of us have been here for so long, which is definitely a testament to, I think, the culture that we have internally. And it's never a dull moment too out there in the ad tech world you don't, or the gaming world, you don't have to, you know, go far to like not to have a new job, but to have just a new set of challenges all the time.
- [35:19]
Sarah Sluice
Okay, fair enough. Well, I want to talk a little bit more about rewarded video because you touched on some of the benefits and the drawbacks or not really the drawbacks actually, which is what I want to talk about a little bit. So I mean, rewarded video, it makes a lot of sense, right? I mean it's one of the top formats in games for a bunch of reasons. You alluded to a lot of them. Players opt in voluntarily. Developers can monetize non playing, non paying users without alienating the whales that actually buy things. It's not being forced on them. But by the same token, I, I wonder about the level of engagement with some players. I haven't played mobile games regularly for a little while, but I was playing word games for a time and it started to get a little bit like annoying because I would be hit like the same 30 second unskippable video over and over again and I gave up watching them and I would just put my phone aside while they played. And I think there might be a percentage of users that are like me and there are also probably some users and what can you do? I mean, it's a little mercenary, right? They just watch the ads for the rewards and there might not be genuine interest. And if the rewards are too generous, you risk cannibalizing in a purchase revenue. It's just a lot to think about. So how do you strike the right balance there?
- [36:50]
Gabrielle Heyman
Well, I mean, well, you kind of asked two questions into one. But in terms, I did talk a lot. We have, you know, we have a very product based organization like product managers that really spend all day long thinking about what the right mix is between, you know, the economy of the game and how many ads you're going to serve and what the ads are. And then so that's one thing in terms of frequency of an annoying ad. I think that's a problem across the ecosystem. I mean that's one of the primary complaints. In fact, when I was watching the World Series recently with my kid he go Dodgers. I live in LA and I'm very excited about that wooden still. In fact I'm wearing like Dodger blue sort of today because I'm still celebrating. My kid, my 12 year old complained about the same ads going on over and over and over and over during the World Series.
- [37:49]
Sarah Sluice
Yeah.
- [37:51]
Gabrielle Heyman
And, and what's so interesting is, you know, there's so much, there's just so much commoditized inventory where there's so many different, you know, DSPs act accessing inventory. And so, you know, how could there not be frequency, I guess, right? The same, the same money is going everywhere allocated by, you know, networks or ad tech that's just has access to that same slot. Like there's so many. So I think frequency is hard to control in general. I don't think that there's a frequency problem in gaming that's any dissimilar or disproportionate at all compared to any other medium. And I would love to see it solve with everyone else. You know. And I also think that I have had a career in ad sales, but I think that a lot of people would say a lot of ads do suck. So I'm here to make them suck less I guess is the thing. Like so for example, I think I remember back in the day when there was TiVo just first really like sprung up DVRs and I was at some event, advertising event and the somebody like on stage asked like how many of you guys have tivos? And like everyone raised their hand basically advertising people one of the first in line to skip ads. And I think a lot of us actually still pay for subs for ad free subs too. And for ad free experiences. You know that, that said there are some ads that are really cool. Like for example, what I miss Vogue. Like I miss magazine print ads. You know Vogue ads in a fashion mag are like editorial. They're stunning, right? And I think that's what we try to do at Zynga is make ads cool by making brands into games. And I think games are so powerful, which is what I was, you know, saying earlier. And the more I think about it, as I was telling you, the more I'm really deep into it because just like you play mahjong, right? And I was at, I'm a member of Chief and there was Chief X la, which is Chief is a network of executive women and they had their LA event and, and I'm sure they did this in every city, but they had a little bingo card thing and with all these different questions that you had to achieve all of that. Actually you had to. It wasn't just bingo, like a line. You had to go through all of them. And once you did, you were entered a raffle to win three days at the Cannon Ranch, among other good prizes. Now I wouldn't want that be what. But the whole thing was a game of thi experience because it basically, you know, had you network with other chiefs to find the answers to these questions and it was just a gamified experience. And I'm like, look, there's another game. Or even I was at another event, Patau, which is another. A marketing organization and a lot of CMOs and founders are part of it. And at their off site they had a crossword puzzle author from the New York Times and magician do a whole thing with a crossword puzzle, right? And it was like a. He made a crossword puzzle like right there from scratch. That was like audience interaction and it was really amazing. And like that's what you see where games are such a part of it. So we're really believing bringing games to ads, you know, and the metrics, the engagement rate, the opt in engagement rates are super high. The mid funnel metrics like favorability, intent to purchase consideration, all of those things and attention, you know, and I know you've done work on the attention economies. People were. I know you had Adelaide on your podcast recently. This is where attention, a lot of attention is. I mean it's funny because I saw an Adelaide presentation about like where on the spectrum of where attention was and one of the number one attention spots was cinema advertising. But look at how box office is totally under, you know, pressure. So I mean it's just like, you know, this really is a engaging experience that I think consumers like consumers, when you ask them, it's one of their favorite ad formats is. Is rewarded number one, number two, playable.
- [42:17]
Sarah Sluice
I like how you phrase that though a little bit earlier. Bringing games to ads. I guess instead of bringing ads to games, like just jamming ads into games, like really being cognizant of the experience.
- [42:31]
Gabrielle Heyman
And I'm gonna write that down. I'm gonna.
- [42:33]
Sarah Sluice
You're the one who said it. I'm just quoting you. Well, I want to get a little nerdy now if you don't mind and talk about Zynga's ad tech. Because Zynga's been an acquirer of ad tech. Although there was a sort of divestiture last year and you guys acquired Chartboost. It was in 2021. I remember covering it. It's a mobile monetization platform. And it was basically like, or it still is a full stack sort of thing. It has a DSP and SSP mediation capabilities. And that acquisition really felt like a sign that Zynga was going big into Programmatic. And then the year after that, in 2022, you guys bought Store Maven, which does app store optimization and mobile growth and user acquisition. And then last year, you guys sold Chart Boost to Loop me, which I also covered. It's funny because I'm going back in my archive, I'm looking for information about all of these news items from the past. I'm like, ooh, I wrote about that. The way I understand it, there's still a relationship there, but you just don't own chartboost anymore. But what can you tell me about Zynga's ad tech ambitions and how important Programmatic is to the monetization strategy going forward and why it makes sense to own some things and not own other things. It's a three parter.
- [43:56]
Gabrielle Heyman
Yeah, it's a good, really good question. I think that if you look at what was happening when we acquired Chartboost, MoPub had just been acquired by Applovin and we worked with mopub. Mopub is the OG mediation layer for mobile games. And in fact, I think Zynga had a lot to do with the success of mopub because we made them build features that we needed, you know, so they really listened to us and got really good at that. And so when Mop was acquired by Applovin, it was like join that, you know, they deprecated mopub. So I think that we went and at the time we felt like the best move was for us to bring that ad tech in house. And like anything, things change and market conditions change, like the facts change. And so we decided at some point that Chart Boost it was better for us to really concentrating on making great games and that we did not have a need for that anymore. So we sold them basically. You know, obviously I'm not in that team that orchestrated those deals, so I can't speak to it like them, but we do. You know, I love, we love the people at Chart Bears and we work with the people in me and Chart Bears and I think they're a great, cool crew. I think Apple, you know, is a formidable competitor to anyone in the mobile app monetization space. So at some point you look at the platform that they built and see, see why they're really winning in that category right now. In the Mobile monetization category. You know, that's what I would say about that. I think that internally what we're really focused on is having great ad tech to serve our studios. So you know, we have Zaid, which is our own internal ad server, but really what it is is a central hub for serving ad monetization needs of our studios. And so that's what I was saying like at the beginning we acquired 12 studios. It's interesting when you're acquiring studios, like some studios already had very sophisticated ad stack, you know, like Rollick. We acquired Rollick. They're a hyper casual game studio. So they had a lot of ads and ads expertise. Obviously acquiring them. You know, other studios that were more casual didn't have as much of an expertise and then some did. And so we really try to supply that support to make sure that they're maximizing obviously not only revenue but also user experience. Like we have some really, really cool ad tech tools in that our engineering and product people have brought to bear. In Zaid, for example, like if there's a bad ad, sometimes there's a bad ad. When I say bad ad, like causing force closers or crashes or this. And when you have an ad stack as complicated as a Zynga where you, you know, have a lot of different ad calls from all sorts of places coming in to be able to turn, identify and turn off that one without having to pause your entire asset. Now like that's the type of technology we focus on building from an ad tech lens. I think a lot of the time is very centered around maximizing our studio monetization of ads and player experience. And player experience is obviously key because without players you have nothing. Right? So that balance to that, you know, player experience, like we have a tool that if any, any employee is playing our games and like sees a bad ad too. Like sometimes these like an just an unjustified weird ad unit coming through. Like the video is not full screen or anything like that. Like we can make a log a complaint right there and like decipher time based like your player ID or whatever. Like what ad was served to you then that was wrong and address it right away.
- [48:15]
Sarah Sluice
What about measurement? Because being able to measure ad effectiveness, that's like catnip for brands, I think. So how do you guys approach measuring ads?
- [48:28]
Gabrielle Heyman
We have an amazing team internally that that's all they do is focus on measuring ads. So we work with many third party vendors to do so. So it depends on what type of measurement, what type of category it is. Like for QSR we'll look at football traffic, right? So we've worked with like four squares for that for tunein, we've worked with Samba to shirt Tunein. We just did a couple of campaigns with them that showed for a broadcast client and for a CTV client that buying, you know, Broadcast plus Zynga or CTV plus Zynga increased tune in. There was like a significant lift in that tune in. We do website conversions too. I mean we have a client who is an insurance company and we can actually measure that completely. Non clickable environments, like a game sponsorship environment that's non clickable drives significant lift in insurance quote finishes, starts and finishes. So you know, it's like a 16 page thing that you have to go through in your phone to get a quote. So it's really effective. And I think, you know, the challenge is just being a general entertainment destination. Many different advertiser categories are relevant for us, like whether that's finance, retail, cpg, QSR entertainment and they all have different ad tech requirements or ad preferred measurement partners, I should say. So it's really being able to build a system where we can try to identify like the measurement partners that can fit the most campaigns that we run and then we work with DISCO on brand Lyft studies. I think that that mid funnel metrics DISCO put out a report recently, not too long ago and I think there's many variations of this notion that games, because of our engagement, it's really those mid funnel metrics that significantly outperform. But then there's also, you know, actual performance metrics too. So like yeah, that's pretty much the, the lay of the land measurement.
- [51:02]
Sarah Sluice
So we're, we're nearly out of time. So I'm going to ask one more question and I want you to make a prediction for me. If we rerecord this podcast like one year from now. So I guess Tuesday, November 10, 2026 or whatever, do you think we'll still be at a point where all the stereotypes about gamer audiences still persist among brands? Like I haven't been to the IAB playfronts, but my colleague, our senior editor Anthony Vargas, he's gone for I think at least the past three years and every time he comes back and he wants to write a story and he's like going to write the same story again. Gaming companies are on stage making the same case that brands should be in games. So yeah, one year from today, will the narrative have finally really shifted or do you think there's still going to be a lot of work to do.
- [51:57]
Gabrielle Heyman
I'm an optimist and a realist and so I don't see that it's going to necessarily be seismically different because time spent is 3x ad spend and if you look at the forecast it's like pretty flat. Like the contribution is pretty flat. That said, I think that there's a lot of like being day to day experience of what's going on in real time. More and more clients are putting multiple game publishers on bias instead of one. I think it is growing and I actually think that you're going to see a trend of bringing games to ads even outside of gaming gaming, you know, platforms. So like outside of a Zynga, outside of the actual games themselves that just gamifying your ads, more interactive ads or games coming to ads or their ads. Like we were saying before. I said that because I meant that I think that that that is growing and I think that the collective reach that you can get combined with that two way engagement is something that brands are leaning way into on CTV and, and in gaming. So that's why I don't think it's only limited to one platform. I think you're going to see that overall as a continuing trend.
- [53:34]
Sarah Sluice
In the meantime, I'm going to go down a rabbit hole and see if I can find some old the Hussies.
- [53:39]
Gabrielle Heyman
Tracks because Hussy's tracks there is like that's really funny. I there's a video out there but I think it'd be really hard to find. I don't think it's digital. It's out there in like analog, not digital form.
- [53:55]
Sarah Sluice
Well, I'm still going to try and find it and if I do, I'm going to link it in our write up of this episode.
- [54:01]
Gabrielle Heyman
Awesome.
- [54:02]
Sarah Sluice
Great. This episode is sponsored by Amazon Ads. Amazon Ads offers a range of products and solutions that can help businesses achieve their advertising goals. Advertising needs a world where marketers no longer have to choose between building their brand and driving results. Amazon Ads helps marketers prioritize solutions that break down silos and simplify campaign management, enabling the orchestration, execution and measurement of holistic campaigns that achieve both objectives. We remove the guesswork for advertisers by making it simple to manage all of their TV planning and buying. With Amazon Ads.
- [54:49]
Gabrielle Heyman
Sam.