SAN FRANCISCO: Marketers who use AdMob, Google’s mobile ad platform, can now advertise directly on games developed by Unity Technologies after the two companies entered a strategic partnership.

After working together for several years to ensure the advertising technology integration actually worked, Google and Unity announced last week that they were now in a position to offer Google advertisers access to Unity’s worldwide network that reaches 1.5bn devices.

According to a joint statement, the Unity ad platform serves more than 9.4bn ad impressions a month and its global user base spends nearly nine billion minutes each day playing Unity-powered mobile games.

In addition, the statement read, Unity has consistently scored 97.8% for valid and viewable rates, or “well above” in-app benchmarks of 54.7%. And to facilitate the new offering, Google will also add Android and iOS to its Universal Apps campaigns network.

“Google is committed to helping drive the mobile gaming ecosystem forward, and we’ve worked with Unity for several years on this advertising integration – a key example for how we enable advertisers to better reach consumers around the world,” said Sissie Hsiao, VP of mobile advertising at Google.

“We’re especially excited about connecting advertisers with new gamers through user-first rewarded ad experiences, where rewards like new levels or extra power-ups complement the game experience,” she added.

She went on to tell CNBC that games account for one in three mobile app downloads and asserted that mobile gaming meets three key issues for advertisers.

“At the end of the day, an advertiser cares about the performance for their advertising, and they care about brand safety, and they care about reach,” she said. “From an advertisers’ perspective, [mobile gaming] is about those three things.”

CNBC also cited research by Newzoo and Google, which estimated at the end of last year that the mobile gaming industry would be worth $50.4bn in 2017.

Interestingly, the research also found that women represent almost half (49%) of all mobile gamers in the US, while two-thirds (65%) of American women aged 10 to 65 play mobile games.

Meanwhile, separate research from Unity has found that 71% of its users are prepared to be served ads instead of having to pay a subscription.

Sourced from Google, Unity Technologies, CNBC, Newzoo; additional content by WARC staff