Gamer Grid
Gamer Grid is Overwolf Ads' audience-identification layer. It houses first-party signals and third-party audience data, and provides precise audience eligibility and targeting for brands and advertisers.
First-party signals include real-time events, like which games someone plays, how often they play, and what hardware they use for gaming, across Overwolf's own large PC player base. Third-party audience data comes from data partners such as Experian and LiveRamp. Overwolf layers the two, not gameplay data alone, to check whether a user is eligible for a given ad campaign before it serves.
What Gamer Grid is used for
Gamer Grid identifies Overwolf users from Overwolf's first-party and third-party audience data, so Overwolf Ads can target a campaign at the players it's actually meant for.
Overwolf's Brand Partnerships team sells and runs these campaigns as direct deals with advertisers, and some of those deals aren't suitable for every player. Gamer Grid is what makes sure a campaign like that reaches only the users it's eligible for, and excludes everyone else by default.
What developers should know and do
Before serving a campaign with eligibility requirements, Overwolf Ads checks whether both the user and the app qualify:
- Gamer Grid checks whether a user meets the campaign's eligibility criteria, for example being 21 or older and located in a specific country.
- A user that Overwolf can't validate as eligible is excluded from the campaign by default and doesn't receive the ad.
- An app can also be excluded from a campaign by default. Overwolf apps built to support Minecraft and Roblox, for example, are excluded from campaigns with an age requirement.
These checks run before the campaign serves, so an eligible campaign can still run for the users and apps that qualify, while everyone else is kept out of it by default.
You don't need to do anything for this to apply to your app. If you want your app excluded from these campaigns entirely, contact your DevRel to request it. If you don't have a DevRel contact, contact us instead.
Frequently asked questions
What makes a campaign "not suitable for every player," and who decides that?
Eligibility requirements come from the rules that apply to a given campaign, for example age-verification rules for certain product categories, not a sales team's preference. We're part of the same ecosystem: your users come before any single deal, and Gamer Grid is what lets us run these campaigns without compromising that.
Does Gamer Grid targeting apply to all ads?
No. Only direct-deal campaigns that carry eligibility requirements. It doesn't change how standard ad campaigns are served to your app.
Is my app opted in by default?
Yes. Every app is eligible for these campaigns by default. Contact your DevRel if you want yours excluded.
Do I need to add anything to my app for these eligibility checks to work?
No. Gamer Grid's eligibility checks run entirely on Overwolf's side before a campaign serves. You don't need to add code, request a permission, or change your manifest.
Could a user in my app still end up seeing a campaign that isn't right for them?
It's possible. No audience-targeting system guarantees 100% accuracy, and eligibility checks reduce that risk rather than eliminate it. If you believe a campaign reached the wrong user or app, contact your DevRel.
Can I opt out of just one type of these campaigns instead of all of them?
Not today. Asking your DevRel to exclude your app excludes it from all of these campaigns, not a specific one.
No audience-targeting system guarantees 100% accuracy. Eligibility identification, exclusion of unidentified users, and app-level exclusions all reduce the risk, but none of them are a zero-failure guarantee.