This new partnership aims to reduce invalid traffic across gaming environments

December 11, 2024 — Anzu, the most advanced intrinsic in-game advertising solution, and Pixalate, the global market-leading ad fraud protection, privacy, and compliance analytics platform, today announced a partnership that will safeguard the intrinsic in-game advertising space by detecting and blocking invalid traffic (IVT) within Anzu’s programmatic gaming inventory across mobile and PC.

Ad fraud continues to result in losses of billions of dollars each year, and sophisticated bots pose a significantly increasing threat to the gaming world. By leveraging Pixalate’s pre-bid Blocking solution, which blocks over 40 types of IVT, Anzu ensures that campaigns running programmatically across its premium PC and mobile gaming inventory retain low fraud levels. This allows them to continue to harbor a safe space where both advertisers and publishers can feel confident working together to effectively reach gamers around the world.

Programmatic buying has become the go-to method for brands to seamlessly connect with players in their favorite games, using Anzu’s IAB-compliant intrinsic in-game ad formats. These formats offer the same programmatic buying experience brands are accustomed to from traditional digital channels, with purchasing options via major DSPs like The Trade Desk, Yahoo and Adform, using standard IAN and oRTB creative specs.
 
On the new partnership, Ben Fenster, Anzu’s Co-Founder and CPO, said, “IVT is less likely within in-game advertising than other advertising channels due to the complex nature of 3D gaming environments, and this new partnership will help safeguard the space to keep it that way. Many advertisers we work with already rely on Pixalate to protect their campaigns across CTV, mobile, and the web. This partnership will extend that protection across their intrinsic in-game ads, which many have integrated into omnichannel campaigns to extend their reach to audiences who are spending more time gaming and less time consuming traditional media.”
 
“We commend Anzu’s commitment to protecting in-game advertisements from invalid traffic,” said Tyler Loechner, VP of Research and Platform Growth at Pixalate. “According to our research, gaming apps command the lion’s share (62%) of programmatic ad spend among mobile app categories, making games a favorite target of fraudsters.”

This announcement comes at a busy time for Anzu, which just published a new report on how gaming can be used to impact younger players in collaboration with SuperAwesome. The company has also just been nominated for a Wires Award recognizing its work on an intrinsic in-game advertising campaign for Sony MEA.