Chart of the Week

Zynga generated $153 million of revenue from in-game ads in 2014

Money for old eyeballs

Zynga generated $153 million of revenue from in-game ads in 2014

One of the key monetisation trends over the past 12 months, has been the growing value of in-game advertising.

Ignored by many due to the perceived bad user experience provided by banner ads, the rise of native advertising, incentivised video ads and now brand advertising is changing opinions.

Even one-time advertising rejectees like Gameloft are now embracing the new revenues.

Old dog, new tricks

And as this chart from Zynga's (NASDAQ:ZNGAfinancials demonstrates, for companies with a lot of inventory scale, there's plenty of money to be made.

For example, during its most recent quarter, it generated $57.5 million from adverts - that's around 30 percent of all its Q4 revenue.

Zynga's advertising revenue over the past five quarters

And the amount (at least for Zynga) is growing fast.

Q4 advertising revenues were up 55 percent quarter-on-quarter and up 139 percent year-on-year.

Across the entire 2014 financial year, Zynga generated $153 million; or around 20 percent of all revenue.

Contributing Editor

A Pocket Gamer co-founder, Jon is Contributing Editor at PG.biz which means he acts like a slightly confused uncle who's forgotten where he's left his glasses. As well as letters and cameras, he likes imaginary numbers and legumes.