Political Advertisements Coming To Zynga's Mobile Games

Zynga Inc (NASDAQ: ZNGA) and The Rubicon Project Inc (NYSE: RUBI) announced on Wednesday a new marketing collaboration.

Several details of the new initiative were provided on Thursday. Zynga and The Rubicon Project will collaborate to offer political advertisers the ability to buy ad units within Zynga's mobile games.

The joint effort will combine Zynga's SponsoredPLAY ad units and The Rubicon Project's recently formed political and advocacy team that was created to attract some of the estimated $11 billion that political parties are expected to spend during 2016. The company noted that more than $1 billion of which is expected to be spent on digital advertisements.

The announcement was initially made during a presentation at the Consumer Electronics Show.

"We are thrilled to extend our exclusive programmatic launch relationship with Zynga to include SponsoredPLAY political campaign advertising in 2016, as digital advertising is projected to become the second-largest area of spending for political campaigns this year," said Theresa Mueller, Director of Political and Advocacy, Rubicon Project. "Political buyers will be tested to see who can find the most impactful strategies in this quickly changing landscape. High impact ad executions like SponsoredPLAY offer campaigns the most personalized and deeply engaging experience available today."

Shares of Zynga were trading higher by 1 percent at $2.51 early Friday morning, while shares of The Rubicon Project were higher by 1.31 percent at $15.43.