Toronto-based digital media co Crucial Interactive is diving deeper into the gaming and entertainment space with a deal to be the exclusive Canadian ad rep for more than 50 Playwire Media properties.

With the agreement, Crucial gets the rights to sell against an audience of more than 6 million active monthly gamers accessing sites such as Gamezone.com and Supercheats.com. As well, it gets access to Playwire’s entertainment verticals such as ScreenRant.com, ComicBookMovie.com and the deal also gives Crucial access to 600,000 kids monthly with verticals like Planetminecraft.com.

The kids verticals are particularly important, says Petar Bozinovski, president of Crucial Interactive, because that audience has significant influence on household purchasing.  Crucial can now offer another avenue for advertisers to target consumers across its suite of sites, for example creating a custom ad channel across  some of the kids sites, as well as others it has partnerships with, such as Blogher.com and Ellentv.com.

Crucial has worked with a select number of Playwire brands (which changed its name in September from Intergi Entertainment) for the past two years. Bozinovski says the deal was expanded to include all of Canada because Playwire wanted its ad inventory under one company.