Mobile Gamers are ‘Focused and Locked In’ – And Brands Finally are Paying Attention
The fragmented media landscape has sent advertisers scrambling for places where consumers actually pay attention. Mobile gaming, it turns out, might be one of the last environments where eyeballs stay still.
Half of Americans now play mobile games regularly, and the demographic skews toward the people marketers most want to reach: millennials and Gen Xers with disposable income and household purchasing power.
“You play, you tap, you pay – it’s all in one environment,” said Gabrielle Heyman, vp of global brand sales and partnership at Zynga, in this video interview with Beet.TV at the IAB PlayFronts. “Mobile gamers generally tend to be more forward on culture, like the first to try new technology.”
Attention scores that dwarf other media
The attention argument for gaming rests on a simple behavioral difference from other screens. Television invites lean-back viewing. Social media encourages endless scrolling. Gaming demands focus – players are trying to win, beat friends, advance levels, and earn rewards.
“Unlike TV, which is passive, or even social where you’re scrolling and participating, in gaming you are focused and locked in,” Heyman said. “That really requires a lot of attention.”
Zynga works with DoubleVerify to measure attention, and the numbers are striking. DoubleVerify classifies a “very high” attention rating as an index of 133. Zynga’s average sits at 204, with some campaigns reaching into the 300s. The company argues this translates directly into brand lift and purchase outcomes, particularly when advertisers use interactive or gamified creative units rather than repurposed video.
Extending reach beyond owned games
At this year’s PlayFronts, Zynga announced Zynga Ads Plus, a product designed to extend the company’s advertising capabilities beyond its own titles. The offering curates a network of 100 top mobile games outside Zynga’s portfolio, delivering potential reach of up to 100 million U.S. mobile gamers.
“We thought we have so much expertise, such a talented team across insights, audience, creative, measurement, that we wanted to bring that same expertise to the broader mobile gaming ecosystem,” Heyman said. The company emphasizes transparency in its app list and continuous curation – what Heyman called “game path optimization” – to maintain quality as titles rise and fall in popularity.
The move reflects a broader industry shift toward making gaming inventory easier for brands to buy. EA launched its own EA Advertising platform in 2026, combining gameplay integrations, native ad units, and proprietary measurement across its portfolio. Premium game publishers are building advertising infrastructure, not just selling one-off sponsorships.
New categories are testing the waters
The brand categories showing up in gaming have expanded considerably. Quick-service restaurants, retail, and CPG have been active for years. Now finance and pharma are entering the space – categories that historically approached gaming with caution.
“There was a time when finance was a little more conservative and hesitant to dip their toes in gaming, and now we’ve seen quite a bit of fintech getting into gaming,” Heyman said. “Pharma is an emerging category as well.”
The underlying economics support the growth. According to Emarketer, U.S. mobile game advertising spending is forecast to reach $8.2 billion in 2026. That’s still just 2.3% of total digital ad spending – a relatively small share given gaming’s reach and time spent. The gap between gaming’s audience scale and its share of ad budgets remains the opportunity advertisers are now chasing.
The creative question: standard or custom?
Not all gaming creative requires custom builds. Standard video and display units work in mobile games just as they do elsewhere. But Heyman argued the better experience comes from interactive formats that match how players engage with the medium.
“Gamers are not passive, they’re leaned in, they’ve got heightened attention on what they’re doing,” she said. “If you can engage them with an ad that does the same thing, that’s the best native fit for platform experience.”
The lift required to execute custom gamified units has dropped, making the format more accessible. Zynga reports strong results in brand lift and purchase outcomes when advertisers commit to fit-for-platform creative rather than simply repurposing assets from other channels.
A free-to-play, ad-supported medium
The business model underlying mobile gaming advertising is straightforward: 90% of players never make in-app purchases. That makes the medium overwhelmingly free-to-play and ad-supported, creating a large captive audience for brand messages.
“Because you’ve got such a captive audience who’s engaged in playing, the attention scores are extremely high,” Heyman said. “It’s not only attention, it’s participation when you can really drive trial and awareness for your product.”
For brands struggling to find engaged audiences in an increasingly fragmented media environment, mobile gaming’s combination of scale, attention, and measurable outcomes is proving difficult to ignore. The challenge now is whether the industry can standardize measurement and creative approaches enough to capture a larger share of media budgets.
The fragmented media landscape has sent advertisers scrambling for places where consumers actually pay attention. Mobile gaming, it turns out, might be one of the last environments where eyeballs stay still.
Half of Americans now play mobile games regularly, and the demographic skews toward the people marketers most want to reach: millennials and Gen Xers with disposable income and household purchasing power.
“You play, you tap, you pay – it’s all in one environment,” said Gabrielle Heyman, vp of global brand sales and partnership at Zynga, in this video interview with Beet.TV at the IAB PlayFronts. “Mobile gamers generally tend to be more forward on culture, like the first to try new technology.”
Attention scores that dwarf other media
The attention argument for gaming rests on a simple behavioral difference from other screens. Television invites lean-back viewing. Social media encourages endless scrolling. Gaming demands focus – players are trying to win, beat friends, advance levels, and earn rewards.
“Unlike TV, which is passive, or even social where you’re scrolling and participating, in gaming you are focused and locked in,” Heyman said. “That really requires a lot of attention.”
Zynga works with DoubleVerify to measure attention, and the numbers are striking. DoubleVerify classifies a “very high” attention rating as an index of 133. Zynga’s average sits at 204, with some campaigns reaching into the 300s. The company argues this translates directly into brand lift and purchase outcomes, particularly when advertisers use interactive or gamified creative units rather than repurposed video.
Extending reach beyond owned games
At this year’s PlayFronts, Zynga announced Zynga Ads Plus, a product designed to extend the company’s advertising capabilities beyond its own titles. The offering curates a network of 100 top mobile games outside Zynga’s portfolio, delivering potential reach of up to 100 million U.S. mobile gamers.
“We thought we have so much expertise, such a talented team across insights, audience, creative, measurement, that we wanted to bring that same expertise to the broader mobile gaming ecosystem,” Heyman said. The company emphasizes transparency in its app list and continuous curation – what Heyman called “game path optimization” – to maintain quality as titles rise and fall in popularity.
The move reflects a broader industry shift toward making gaming inventory easier for brands to buy. EA launched its own EA Advertising platform in 2026, combining gameplay integrations, native ad units, and proprietary measurement across its portfolio. Premium game publishers are building advertising infrastructure, not just selling one-off sponsorships.
New categories are testing the waters
The brand categories showing up in gaming have expanded considerably. Quick-service restaurants, retail, and CPG have been active for years. Now finance and pharma are entering the space – categories that historically approached gaming with caution.
“There was a time when finance was a little more conservative and hesitant to dip their toes in gaming, and now we’ve seen quite a bit of fintech getting into gaming,” Heyman said. “Pharma is an emerging category as well.”
The underlying economics support the growth. According to Emarketer, U.S. mobile game advertising spending is forecast to reach $8.2 billion in 2026. That’s still just 2.3% of total digital ad spending – a relatively small share given gaming’s reach and time spent. The gap between gaming’s audience scale and its share of ad budgets remains the opportunity advertisers are now chasing.
The creative question: standard or custom?
Not all gaming creative requires custom builds. Standard video and display units work in mobile games just as they do elsewhere. But Heyman argued the better experience comes from interactive formats that match how players engage with the medium.
“Gamers are not passive, they’re leaned in, they’ve got heightened attention on what they’re doing,” she said. “If you can engage them with an ad that does the same thing, that’s the best native fit for platform experience.”
The lift required to execute custom gamified units has dropped, making the format more accessible. Zynga reports strong results in brand lift and purchase outcomes when advertisers commit to fit-for-platform creative rather than simply repurposing assets from other channels.
A free-to-play, ad-supported medium
The business model underlying mobile gaming advertising is straightforward: 90% of players never make in-app purchases. That makes the medium overwhelmingly free-to-play and ad-supported, creating a large captive audience for brand messages.
“Because you’ve got such a captive audience who’s engaged in playing, the attention scores are extremely high,” Heyman said. “It’s not only attention, it’s participation when you can really drive trial and awareness for your product.”
For brands struggling to find engaged audiences in an increasingly fragmented media environment, mobile gaming’s combination of scale, attention, and measurable outcomes is proving difficult to ignore. The challenge now is whether the industry can standardize measurement and creative approaches enough to capture a larger share of media budgets.
