EA announced it’d be creating a whole new platform for advertising last month, something I’m sure has you so excited you’re jumping out of your seat and clicking your heels. You might be potentially doing a little dance and saying ‘yipee!’ Personally speaking, the very thought exhausts me, though Alexander Dao, EA’s vice president of advertising and sponsorship, at least has somewhat of a measured stance towards it.
That’s via an interview with The Game Business. In it, Dao says that ads in games are “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 uses the example of the most recent Skate, a game that hit the industry like a corporate brick and, as our own Kara Phillips said, feels like it was made by people in suits. Still, Dao maintains that 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.”
As for what the new platform means for videogames, Dao says that they’re trying to “standardize some of this.” Mainly in terms of viewability standards and the ability to share reports back to the company they’re advertising for, so they’re “seeing consistency.” Basically, justifying the obscene amount of cash that gets spent in routine advertisements each year.