Electronic Arts (EA) has spent years telling us it\u2019s in the game. Now it wants brands in there too.<\/p>\n
The games developer has built its own ad server into its Frostbite engine and is now staffing up the commercial layer to sell it. Job postings across its careers site show it is hiring for at least six roles spanning ad tech engineering data analytics, ad operations and product marketing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The moves are part of a wider launch of EA Advertising \u2014 Electronic Arts\u2019 most serious attempt yet to turn its games into a scalable media business. Indeed, it has tried this before. A 2006 deal that put dynamic ads into Need For Speed and Battlefield fizzled out. Billboard ads in UFC 4 in 2020 triggered a player backlash. The model that survived those missteps was simpler: a brand pays upfront, a logo gets coded into the game before it ships and the deal is done. It was lucrative enough as a business but it had a ceiling. What EA is launching now is built on a proprietary ad server and SDK designed for its Frostbite engine.<\/p>\n
That means ads can be served dynamically inside the game environment, with targeting available at launch based on geography and flight date, and impression measurement aligned to IAB standards. In practice, that makes EA\u2019s inventory legible to media buyers in a way it never has been before.\u00a0<\/p>\n
What this isn\u2019t, though, is a full on programmatic play \u2014 at least not yet. There is no DSP access, no open auction and no automated buying. Instead, EA is going direct first, working with advertisers and agencies through its own sales to build bespoke integrations. Targeting is limited to geography and flight date. This way EA can establish the value of the inventory, prove the engagement numbers, build the tooling and then open the platform.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat combination of minimal targeting plus DSP-grade verification and identity infrastructure already in place reads like a setup for an easier programmatic integration down the line, while keeping things in-house for now: better margins, more control over premium sports inventory while demand is hot,\u201d said ad tech expert Shirley Marschall.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whether EA can get there is another question. Bigger and more experienced companies have tried to build and scale ads businesses and fallen short. EA at least has the audience \u2014 120 million monthly players, in fact. But this is as much about selling it to ad-averse gamers as it is to ad-obsessed marketers. And historically, that has been the harder sell. The early evidence, however, gives EA something to point to.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lowe\u2019s ran campaigns across EA SPORTS FC, Madden NFL and College Football spanning more than 987,000 games played. Red Bull activated against branded in-game objectives across 128 million matches played and 1.2 million objectives completed. Meanwhile, Mountain Dew built a fully playable team in College Football 26, complete with a custom stadium.<\/p>\n
The numbers are hard to ignore but so is the risk. The live, unscripted nature of gaming that makes the audience so valuable is also the thing brand safety teams will lose sleep over. Unlike a pre-roll or a display placement, a brand has no control over what\u2019s happening in the frame around its ad \u2014 and in-game brand safety tooling remains nowhere near as mature as it is on the open web.<\/p>\n
To allay some of those concerns, EA said ads will be viewable, delivered to real audiences and verified through a partnership with Integral Ad Science using industry-accredited standards. It is, in other words, a translation exercise, taking the credibility signals media buyers trust on the open web and applying them to a gaming environment. Without it, EA\u2019s inventory would remain harder to sell to agency buyers conditioned to buy against standardized signals.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
For those advertisers that want to take it step further there\u2019s the EA SPORTS Partner Program. It\u2019s a premier tier for a select group that gets them access not just to in-game placements but to live events, athlete platforms, ratings reveals and other moments around the games. Visa is already signed up, as are Xfinity and Peacock. It is, in effect, a walled garden within a walled garden: the programmatic layer for buyers who want scale, and the partner program for brands that want to be woven into the fabric of the games themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy laying the groundwork for self-serve brand integrations and structuring native ad units aligned to IAB standards, it is aiming to tap into long-tail demand and existing programmatic budgets,\u201d said Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. \u201cIt parallels the shift towards live ad insertion in sports broadcasting and taps into the authenticity created by the presence of advertising in real-world sports, circumventing the challenges of maintaining immersion and seamlessness faced by other games advertising formats.\u201d<\/p>\n