The ability for advertisers to target ads to gamers while they’re playing games is one thing. But reaching those players across CTV, mobile and the web, in addition to when they’re actually in a gaming app, remains an untapped omnichannel opportunity.
Which is why the game developer platform Unity and SSP Index Exchange announced an integration on Wednesday that pairs Unity’s in-game audience info with Index’s curated Marketplace deals.
It’s the first time Unity’s audience data will be available for ad targeting outside the Unity platform. And, in addition to Index Exchange using Unity’s data to target web and CTV audiences, Unity’s curation partner, Livewire, can also create targetable deal IDs via the Index SSP.
The omnichannel play
The Unity and Index integration illustrates two trends that are reshaping how marketers think about gaming campaigns.
For one thing, marketers are finally sold on the idea that gaming audiences aren’t a monolith, said Alex Gardner, chief revenue officer at Index Exchange. And marketers are excited about opportunities to reach a wide swath of core demographics found in gaming apps beyond just young, tech-savvy men, he added.
And, secondly, there’s the growing popularity of omnichannel curated deals that span more media and format types than typical deals. For instance, Index’s curated Marketplaces have seen “a dramatic rise in adoption” over the past two and a half years, Gardner said. And SSPs are leaning into that trend by curating more inventory across different publisher types.
The advancements SSPs have made with curated deals over the past few years inspired Unity to look beyond its own ad platform for ways to activate its audience data, according to Chris Feo, SVP of programmatic sales and partnerships at Unity.
And aside from direct audience targeting, he said, there’s plenty of behavioral data that the gaming platform can bring to the equation for Index’s curated deals, which isn’t data that’s available elsewhere.
Gaming as a data signal
Unity’s software platform has been used to develop some of the most successful video games on the market, including on mobile, consoles and PC.
Some notable titles include Pokémon GO, the indie standout Hollow Knight and its 2025 sequel Silksong, and international hits like the open-world RPG Genshin Impact and soccer management simulator Top Eleven.
As the software platform that underpins tens of thousands of gaming properties and north of a quarter-billion monthly active users in the US (and more than 3 billion worldwide), Unity can pull insights on the behavior of millions of gamers through SDK connections, Feo said. It can access data on what games people play, when they play them, how they interact with in-game ads and whether they make in-game purchases.
The bulk of this data is currently derived from mobile gaming audiences, Feo said. But, increasingly, Unity-developed games are available across mobile, console, PC, VR and even streaming services that have launched gaming offerings. So the company’s data footprint has naturally expanded to new media types, he said.
All of this data is valuable for building player personas that can be targeted as part of omnichannel curated deals or as a complement to national brand campaigns, Feo said.
For instance, he said, a fast-food company with its own mobile app (think Taco Bell) wants to reach people who are comfortable – even habitual – about making in-app purchases. Why not target mobile gamers who frictionlessly purchase in those apps as a proxy?
Unity knows which gamers are inclined to spend money in gaming apps, Feo said, and brands can target them in those apps via the Index integration. But brands can also now retarget those audiences when they’re watching CTV or browsing the web.
Omnichannel isn’t single-player
Unity has worked with Index Exchange as an SSP partner for years, including for in-game placements and ads typical to mobile games, such as rewarded video and interstitials, Feo said. Unity also operates its own SSP for buying this inventory more directly.
But, as a gaming-first ad platform, Unity couldn’t necessarily execute an omnichannel strategy on its own, Feo said. With its data integrated into Index’s Marketplace deals, Unity audiences can be activated across far more media channels than the gaming engine can offer.
That being said, most SSPs boast omnichannel publisher connections. And Unity partners with other SSPs to sell its gaming ad inventory, including PubMatic and Magnite, Feo said.
So why did Unity choose Index Exchange for this omnichannel integration?
Unity was impressed with how Index enabled audience matching between the two platforms through its integration with Unity’s Audience Hub data clean room, according to Feo.
“For an audience that is derived in mobile, when you want to bring it cross-platform, interoperability with things like UID2 and RampID, and being able to be found on connected TV, were really important,” he said.
No data fees
Another question for Unity might be why, if it wants to extend ad buys around the web, it didn’t integrate with a DSP.
The main thing, Feo responded, is that Unity didn’t want its data to be a standalone product sold in a DSP’s data marketplace. By activating through an SSP instead, he said, Unity’s data “will always be tied to media.”
Speaking of data marketplace concerns, Unity was also swayed by Index declining to collect additional data fees for curated deals.
“We’re not a data broker, and we’re not here to sell data as a service,” Feo said.
Rather than trying to earn marginal revenue through data sales, Unity wants to prove that gaming audiences can drive performance. That way, Feo said, marketers may be convinced to devote larger budgets to the gaming channel and include gaming inventory in larger omnichannel ad buys rather than treat the channel as a separate budget item.
“Only 3% of the total digital budget goes to gaming today, yet [gameplay] rivals the time and attention of TV and social,” Feo said.
Being able to reach and understand more about those audiences is the prize, he said. “And it’s almost irrelevant that it happens within a game.”
