Prior to now month alone, Take-Two Interactive acquired Zynga for $13 billion, Sony PlayStation purchased the sport studio Bungie for $3.6 billion and Microsoft dropped $69 billion for Activision-Blizzard, its largest acquisition ever.

For main platforms and {hardware} gamers like Sony and Microsoft (which owns Xbox), this pattern is pushed by the identical technique we’ve seen play out amongst on-line walled gardens, which are actually rising into content material fortresses. The thought is to amass a media and leisure bundle on one facet of a log-in or subscription service.

For mobile-first firms, the consolidation spree can also be about tying collectively sport builders with the promoting and efficiency advertising and marketing expertise that monetizes their apps.

However the optimism for in-game promoting nonetheless should be realized. For now, gaming advert income is pretty primary – like opting to observe a video advert in return for an in-game enhance. Finally, dynamic advert insertion may make it potential to focus on advertisements to wall (a banner, if you’ll) in video games or place gadgets within the scene.

How far will sport builders go? Manufacturers are hungry for on-line consideration round video content material, with a lot media consumption disappearing into advertiser blackholes like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video or HBO.

Gaming is likely to be the next-best possibility – Netflix CEO Reed Hastings notoriously dubbed sleep and video video games the corporate’s essential rivals, notes AdExchanger managing editor Allison Schiff on the episode – if builders (and players) will abdomen the intrusion.

SSP report

And what’s new for SSPs?

Nothing new emerged by way of a challenger to Google, which dominates as the bulk chief within the class. However publishers work with 5.8 SSPs on common – although that’s down from the seven common SSPs Advertiser Perceptions anticipated to see throughout its current writer survey. Affiliate Editor Anthony Vargas has the story there.