Zynga builds its own ad network, lookouts for more acquisitions

In the last quarter of 2020, Zynga’s revenue was $ 616 million, up 52% year-over-year, and total annual revenue for 2020 was $ 1.97 billion, Zynga’s highest revenue ever.  

Frank Gibeau, Zynga’s CEO, said to investors that the gaming  giant expects to build its own ad network, including “key components of technology” related to the demand side, the supply side, an exchange layer, and some type of attribution. 

The company might also consider to acquire some ad tech.

The company also plans to launch new games including Puzzle Combat, Farmville 3 and a Star Wars, as well as new hypercasual games and cross-platform games.

In 2020, the company acquired two Istanbul-based gaming studios. In June 2020, Zynga and Peak announced the deal from their Twitter account. Zynga has paid Peak $900 million in cash and $900 million in Zynga stock. A few months after this acquisition, In October,  Zynga acquired 80% of Rollic for around $180 million in cash. The remaining 20% will be acquired over the next three years. 

“As you know, we’ve been a consolidator inside of this business for a while, and we’re going to continue to be on offense [looking for] great companies, great cultures, great teams that we can bring into Zynga,” Gibeau said to Techcrunch. 

Frank Gibeau also made a statement on Apple’s app tracking transparency feature, which will roll out in early spring. Gibeau said that he thinks that the upcoming feature could be good for Zynga. 

“A lot of traditional marketing services are not going to be able to survive very well,” he said. “Because we’re a first-party data company — all the data we generate is coming to our services from our games — and because we’re at scale … IDFA is an opportunity for our company.”