Unity has partnered with Snap to increase the reach of its ads and game engine

Game engine maker Unity has partnered with Snap to increase the reach of its advertising and technology platform.

The deal expands the reach of Unity’s Ads offering to Snapchat advertisers, and it brings Snap technology to game developers through Snap Kit tools. It’s another sign that gaming is more mainstream today than ever and part of a shared social consumer experience.

The alliance is in the works in the second half of 2020 and it is a partnership of giants. More than 50% of all mobile games use Unity, and Snapchat has ads and game integrations reaching an audience of 249 million people every day.

Julie Shumaker is the vice president of revenue and exploitation systems at Unity, and she said in an email to GamesBeat that Snap’s large ad community on its messaging service will be a good fit for Unity’s highly engaged and valuable player audience. The alliance should encourage social media sharing and game discovery.

“We both focus on what’s best for users, and in this partnership, users are developers and players alike,” said Shumaker. “Developers will take advantage of both the increased demand for ads with SAN bidding on Unity offerings, and the Snap Kit integration will give them additional benefits in discovering social games between players.”

As of today, Unity Ads is now included in the Snap Audience Network (SAN). Snapchat’s SAN Advertiser Campaigns will now include video inventory from Unity’s extensive network of mobile game titles, pushing advertisers beyond Snapchat. Unity Ads reports more than 22.9 billion monthly global ad impressions and reaches more than two billion monthly active users through game developers using the engine.

In 2020, mobile ad viewers converted at higher frequencies, with an install conversion rate of 23%, and mobile gamers installed 84% more apps due to the pandemic. Snap launched games in April 2019, and it has reached more than 100 million game downloads as gaming becomes a shared activity that people increasingly engage in on Snapchat, Snap’s Ben Schwerin said in an email to GamesBeat.

“With Snap Kit, we are integrated with hundreds of apps, but we have not yet focused directly on the game market – the same is true for Snap Audience Network (SAN),” said Schwerin. “We took this opportunity to move to the largest platform in games: Unity.”

Available today on the Unity Asset Store, mobile game developers can now also take advantage of certain features of Snap Kit to enhance gameplay and game discovery experience. Developers can use Snap Kit’s Login Kit so that gamers can use their Snapchat account as a quick way to sign up and log in to games. And Snap Kit’s Creative Kit extends the experience by allowing users to share their gameplay, decorate 15 second photos or videos with branded stickers, or attach an AR lens made with game branding for sharing. with their Snapchat friends.

Snap’s Bitmoji avatars will be integrated with Unity in early 2021, adding a new level of personalization to gameplay through cartoon-style avatars. Bitmoji for Game’s Unity SDK allows developers to use 3D Bitmoji to create an immersive experience in games created with Unity.