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.
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.