Anzu, an in-game advertising company, has raised $48 million in Series B—bringing us all a little bit closer to the future in which every in-game store, soda, and skin is selling you something.
The new funding round brings Anzu’s total funding to $65 million, co-founder and CEO Itamar Benedy told Marketing Brew.
Benedy said the company plans to spend its latest haul staffing up in Japan, the US, and Tel Aviv, including in its C-suite. Anzu recently brought on Nerissa MacDonald, who formerly led Meta’s global marketing partnerships business in North America, as the company’s EVP of global sales.
Investors in Anzu include WPP, Sony, NBCUniversal, Samsung, and the parent company of the Chicago Cubs. Brands like American Eagle, Levi’s, Samsung, and Vodafone have used Anzu’s tech to put their brands in video games, Benedy said.
Game time: Anzu and other programmatic in-game advertising companies like Bidstack are aiming to bring all the wonder and magic of programmatic advertising to video games, a category the advertising industry has only recently begun to pay serious attention to.
- The Interactive Advertising Bureau recently overhauled its measurement standards for in-game advertising, giving the category a boost of legitimacy.
- The IAB also hosted its first ever PlayFronts, an opportunity for the gaming industry to pitch itself to advertisers and hopefully shed some less-than-flattering stereotypes about who gamers are.
While Benedy believes there’s room for competition in the mobile gaming space, Anzu’s business is focused primarily on capturing ad inventory within HD AAA title games for consoles.
“We are the market leaders today,” he said. “I don’t see room for more players in AAA premium content.”
Disclosure: Axel Springer, Morning Brew’s parent company, is an investor in Anzu.
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