Why Is Playrix Advertising Rival Games Inside Gardenscapes?

Austin standing between the Tasty Travels and Hotel Legacy advertisements while counting banknotes.

Why is Playrix allowing Century Games and Temu ads inside Gardenscapes? We examine how the ad system works and why the risk may pay off.

Why would Playrix allow competing games to advertise inside Gardenscapes? Isn’t that an invitation for players to leave, install something else, and spend their time and money with another company?

On the Gardenscapes accounts we monitored, we saw ads for Tasty Travels and Hotel Legacy. Both games belong to Century Games, a publisher competing for many of the same casual players. We also received an ad for Temu, showing that the advertising is not limited to mobile games.

These were the ads delivered to our accounts. Other players may have seen different ones—or no ads at all. Country, device, operating system, and campaign availability can all affect what appears.

Gardenscapes Is Also Valuable Advertising Space

Gardenscapes has traditionally made money through in-game purchases such as coins, boosters, extra moves, passes, and limited-time bundles. The arrival of rewarded ads in Gardenscapes adds another source of revenue.

Depending on how a campaign is structured, Playrix may earn money when an ad is shown, clicked, or leads to an installation or another action. Even players who never buy anything inside Gardenscapes can therefore generate revenue by watching an optional ad.

Gardenscapes is no longer valuable only as a game. It is also a place where outside companies can pay to reach an established audience.

Playrix Has an Audience Advertisers Want

Playrix says more than 100 million people play its games every month and describes itself as one of the world’s top three mobile gaming companies.

Gardenscapes alone has passed 500 million downloads on Google Play and has collected more than 13 million reviews. Downloads are not the same as current active players, but they show the enormous reach the game has built over the years.

Playrix also owns Homescapes, Fishdom, Township, and several other titles. Together, these games give the company access to millions of people already interested in casual gameplay, decorating, long-term progression, stories, and limited-time events.

Advertisers are not simply paying for a few seconds of screen time. They are paying to reach people who regularly play mobile games and are comfortable spending time inside free-to-play apps.

Promoting Another Playrix Game Is Different

When Playrix promotes Homescapes, Fishdom, or Township inside Gardenscapes, it is using cross-promotion. The company is moving players from one Playrix product to another without paying Google, Meta, or another outside platform for the exposure.

Even if someone becomes less active in Gardenscapes, that player remains inside the Playrix ecosystem. An ad for a game owned by another publisher is different because it gives the advertiser an opportunity to take the player somewhere Playrix does not control.

Tasty Travels and Hotel Legacy Belong to Century Games

Tasty Travels: Merge Game is listed on the App Store under Century Games Pte. Ltd. Players merge ingredients, prepare dishes, complete orders, and unlock new destinations.

Hotel Legacy: Merge Game is published on Google Play by Century Games Innovation Pte. Ltd. and also appears on the official Century Games website. It combines merge gameplay with hotel renovation, decorating, and story progression.

These were not two unrelated ads. Both games come from the same publisher and target people who may already enjoy many of the systems found in Gardenscapes.

For Century Games, this is a valuable opportunity. Instead of showing its ads to random phone users, it can reach players who have already demonstrated an interest in long-running casual games.

Why Would Playrix Take That Risk?

Every ad for Tasty Travels or Hotel Legacy gives Century Games a chance to pull a Gardenscapes player into one of its own games. Some players may try the advertised title and return. Others may keep both games, while a smaller number could eventually leave Gardenscapes.

Playrix appears willing to accept that risk because most viewers will probably not abandon the game. If the advertising revenue is greater than the value of the players it may lose, the decision makes business sense.

The company also has enough scale to test ads with limited groups. Offers that let players watch an ad for extra moves or coins give Playrix a clear way to compare advertising revenue with changes in playing time, retention, and in-game spending.

Almost any developer can place ads inside an app. Far fewer have an audience large enough to turn a limited advertising test into a meaningful source of revenue.

The Temu Ad Reveals a Broader Strategy

If we had seen only Tasty Travels and Hotel Legacy, the ads could have been interpreted as a campaign aimed specifically at casual gamers. Then Temu appeared.

Temu is an online marketplace, not a game publisher. Its presence suggests that the advertising space inside Gardenscapes may be available to a much wider range of businesses.

It also makes an individual agreement between Playrix and Century Games less necessary as an explanation. The ads may be arriving through a larger advertising system that fills available placements with different campaigns.

Under that model, one player might see a merge game, another might see Temu, and someone else could receive an ad from a completely different company.

Playrix May Not Choose Every Ad

Mobile apps commonly use ad mediation systems that connect several advertising sources. Those sources compete for the opportunity to fill each available placement.

Some ads are selected through real-time bidding, while others are served according to a priority order based on expected revenue. Publishers can usually apply filters and block certain categories without manually selecting every advertiser.

Google’s AdMob documentation explains that mediation can organize ad traffic by country, platform, app, and ad format. There is no public confirmation that AdMob delivered the ads we observed, but it provides a documented example of how automated in-app advertising can work.

Playrix has long used multiple acquisition channels to bring new players into its games. What we are seeing now works in the opposite direction: outside advertisers are paying to reach players who are already inside Gardenscapes.

Why Ads Can Differ Between Players

An advertising campaign may target only certain countries, devices, or operating systems. It may also have a limited budget or a daily cap on how many times it can appear.

Google has stated that some versions of Gardenscapes include optional ads that players can watch to receive lives. The words “some versions” matter because the feature does not necessarily appear in the same way for every account.

Playrix has not publicly explained how it selects accounts for these offers. It would make business sense to test ads with players who rarely make purchases, since an optional ad could generate revenue from someone who otherwise plays for free. However, that remains a possible strategy rather than a confirmed fact.

What These Ads Say About Playrix

Allowing a competitor into Gardenscapes may look like a sign of weakness, but the opposite may be true. Playrix has built an audience valuable enough that rival publishers are willing to pay for access to it.

The company controls where the ads appear, when they are offered, and what the player receives for watching them. The placement of ads inside the To Do menu also shows how advertising can be fitted into an existing part of the game rather than presented as a separate system.

The Temu ad makes the strategy even clearer. Playrix is not only offering access to gamers on behalf of other game publishers. It is opening the same audience to advertisers from other industries.

Conclusion

Playrix’s real strength is not simply its ability to display ads inside Gardenscapes. It is the fact that other companies—including rival game publishers—consider the Gardenscapes audience worth paying to reach.

An ad could send a player to another game or service. But Playrix owns the placement, earns money from the opportunity, and has enough scale to determine whether the risk is worth taking.

Playrix may be opening the gate, but it still owns the garden.