Zynga has decided to diversify its portfolio with marketing assets. It includes the Chartboost platform, specializing in mobile advertising and monetization. It cost $250 million.
The deal took place against the background of the recent launch of Apple‘s new privacy policy, which severely restricts the IDFA ID on iOS
“We can start developing a truly reliable platform within the mobile ecosystem, which is especially important in connection with the turmoil around IDFA,” commented Frank Gibeau, CEO of Zynga, on the deal. “This is an opportunity to increase our share through vertical integration into advertising technologies, and this gives us a real advantage and maximizes our gaming scale.”
According to Gibo, not all current Chartboost customers would agree to share data with Zynga. Therefore, the company plans to “build walls” between divisions, as some game development studios do. In other words, the companies are probably going to work partly independently in order to preserve the privacy of Chartboost data and customers from Zynga itself.
The deal will finally close in the third quarter of 2021. Zynga promises to transfer the money for the purchase in cash.
Chartboost is a marketing platform that was founded in 2011. Now there are 700 million people in its monthly user base. Chartboost conducts 90 billion advertising auctions during the month.