EA CEO Andrew Wilson has revealed plans to “harness the power” of its game communities and use advertising as a “meaningful driver of growth” for the company.
In EA’s latest financial report, Wilson fielded comments from investors, advising that whilst the megacorp needs to be “very thoughtful about advertising”, given “many, many billions of hours” are spent on its games, “advertising has an opportunity to be a meaningful driver of growth for [EA]”.
“To answer your question on advertising broadly, again, I think it’s still early on that front,” Wilson said. "And we have looked over the course of our history to be very thoughtful about advertising in the context of our play experiences.
Justified hate for EA aside, I really don’t mind unobtrusive product placement in games or media. Take The Boys for example, they have heavy product placement in the show (Fresca, Kraken rum, Adidas, etc.) but it didn’t detract from the narrative and I think the casual viewer didn’t even notice it.
I have no faith whatsoever EA will be able to keep themselves from hamfisting ads in the player’s face, but I am not categorically against the idea.
It’d have to be done perfectly for me to be “okay” with it, because I’m pretty fundamentally opposed to being advertised to, especially by a product I already paid for. And yes, it’s EA so it’ll probably be either a forced encounter in-game or it’ll literally be a banner ad in the menus.
I think if its implemented properly it can be done. Don’t go full Ubisoft and blast store ads on your start screen. I think if you know your audience and put some thought into humorous/thoughtful or interesting content on billboards in GTA or racing games it cold blend in quite well. Even monster energy in death stranding wasn’t that bad, it was so obvious it was funny. I think thats what works.
I’m worried that that isn’t what traditionally sells well and everything has been focussed-grouped into absolute vanilla boringness. we’ll see what happens.