Zynga has opened its social gaming website to Facebook ads, as the social network looks to boost its ad reach amid mounting pressure from its new shareholders.
The deal means visitors to Zynga’s site are being shown Facebook sponsored stories, ads triggered when a Facebook member ‘likes’ a certain brand or business on the social site.
The financials of the deal between Facebook and Zynga have not been released, so it is unknown how they will split any revenue that comes from the advertisements.
The ads will only be “sponsored stories about activity that has been shared with you,” as the website does not “sell information that tells advertisers who you are,” according to Facebook’s help centre.
Like the ads that now appear on Facebook.com, users will have the ability to remove the advertisements from Zynga’s page as well.
In a statement, Facebook said: “We have had a close relationship with Zynga for a number of years and we think we can deliver value to Zynga and to the people playing their games by showing the same ads that they see on Facebook. We will not be showing ads on other sites at this time.”
Zynga is the logical good place for Facebook to begin its advertising expansion, given how closely tied the two companies are.
In the first quarter of this year, 15% of Facebook’s total revenue was brought in from Zynga. Of that revenue, around 11% came from the 30% in transaction revenue The other 4% came from advertising that was done on Zynga games.
The 15% number is down from 19% the previous quarter, where 12% of Facebook’s revenue came directly from Zynga and 7% came from the revenue generated by ads.
Facebook has fallen 13 percent since its stock market debut last month, amid concerns that ad revenue growth is not keeping pace with surging membership.
Facebook also became the seventh company to agree to give people advance warning if its mobile applications pull personal information from mobile phones and tablet computers.
The other six companies are Apple, Google, Amazon.com, Microsoft, Research in Motion and Hewlett-Packard.
Read the official Facebook page here.
