EA VP Urges Companies To Think About In-Game Ads During Development: ‘That’s A Huge Opportunity’

Google runs on ads. Facebook runs on ads. Apple runs on fees collected from its App Store which runs on ads. Why not turn gaming into the next great ad-driven business? That’s the logical conclusion of Electronic Arts’ new video game advertising platform which it announced back in June. EA VP of advertising and sponsorships Alexander Dao think it represents a “huge opportunity” for the video game industry.

Here was his response when The Game Business Show host Chris Dring asked if developers should be thinking about ad opportunities early on in production:

That’s a huge opportunity, not just for EA but broadly, because most of the games that have been around for a while, building the advertising experience is really retrofitting it in,” he explained. “But as you think about new games that are coming out, as you think about free-to-play experiences that are happening on the console side… like our Skate game. Those are opportunities where if you actually design them with the right advertising and brand experience in there from the get-go, it just makes it easier. It makes it feel more native and it creates more flexibility in the types of brands that can come in and out. So, I do see a big opportunity there.

EA Advertising is a platform that’s directly integrated into Frostbite, the engine EA uses to make its biggest games, from Madden to Battlefield. The idea is to streamline what’s required to create custom ads for clients and then track how players “engage” with the ads. “Advertisers can now collaborate with EA in a privacy-safe way to improve targeting and gain deeper campaign insights,” the company wrote last month. “EA ensures ads are viewable, delivered to real audiences, and measured using industry-accredited standards in partnership with Integral Ad Science.”

Early experiments included a custom Mountain Dew stadium “playable experience” in EA Sports College Football 26 and Visa branding in EA Sports FC. “We did something with Lowe’s where they sponsored the Stadium Pulse and the Stadium Pulse in college football ended up having over a billion impressions,” Dao said. “As we do these things, it’s ultimately around like, you know, are the players engaging with it? Are they talking about it? Is it ultimately leading to the brand being talked about and engaged in a positive way? And so those are all things we’re measuring and iterating on as we do more and more activations.”

We’ve seen suggestions that ad-supported hardware and games could be used to help keep prices down even as component costs increase and development budgets spiral out of control, just as they have in other industries. Of course, one of the ironies here is that the sports games EA is currently experimenting with shoving ads into are already some of the most lucrative franchises in the business. How does that help the single-player blockbusters that need to sell over 5 million copies to break even? It probably doesn’t. Most people are spending their time in Fortnite, not God of War. And why let all of that captured attention go unmonetized?

“I think when you take a look at what’s happened with advertising over the years, it always follows where the audience is and where the attention is,” Dao told The Game Business Show. “You saw that happen with social media. You saw that happen with retail media. You see that happening now with connected TV where there’s a lot of time spent and if done properly, just a really big advertising opportunity. Gaming represents that same opportunity. You’ve already seen it on the mobile side, but specifically with console and HD gaming, there’s massive audiences there, a ton of engagement there. It’s just a big opportunity broadly for marketers to start to go in.”

And we all know how much people love social media and Roku.