Overview
- On Thursday, July 16, EA advertising chief Alexander Dao urged developers to design new games with built-in ad experiences rather than retrofitting placements later.
- EA Advertising is live and directly integrated into the Frostbite engine to let marketers place dynamic ads such as stadium billboards and convert 2D assets into 3D in-game objects.
- EA has already run brand experiments that include a Mountain Dew stadium in College Football 26, Visa branding in EA Sports FC, Vans items in Skate, and a Lowe’s-sponsored Stadium Pulse that Dao said reached more than a billion impressions.
- The company is working with third parties including the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Integral Ad Science to standardize in-game ad formats and viewability measurement to give marketers consistent reporting.
- Publishers see ads as a way to offset rising development costs and enable lower-price or ad-supported options, but the move raises questions about player acceptance and how advertising will fit non-sports or story-driven games.