Electronic Arts has announced EA Advertising, a platform that lets brands buy placements inside its games, which the company says will let advertisers “integrate directly into gameplay.” EA described the platform in a press release on Monday.
The company framed the placements as additions. EA said brands would appear through “dynamic, real-time placements, from stadium signage to custom in-game content,” and described an approach designed “to enhance, not disrupt, the player experience.” It added that in these environments, brands “become part of the game itself.” David Tinson, EA’s chief experiences officer, said the model gives brands a way to show up that adds value and respects players.
The offering centers on EA’s sports titles. For games like EA Sports FC and Madden NFL, EA said it would sell native ad units such as digital ad boards, scoreboards, and broadcast overlays, similar to the advertising viewers see during a televised match, GameSpot reported. EA also said it would sell custom integrations built for specific games and audiences, including in-game challenges, reward-driven objectives, branded content, and cosmetic items, supported by a proprietary ad server, an SDK, and what it called advanced targeting drawn from aggregated engagement data.
EA pointed to past brand tie-ins as a template, naming Visa, Lowe’s, Red Bull, Xfinity, Peacock, and Mountain Dew, as CNBC noted. The EA Advertising site also lists non-sports titles, including Skate and The Sims 4, among the communities open to brands, Game Developer reported, though the company did not say whether ads would reach single-player games.
EA Advertising Vision
The announcement extends an effort that long predates this platform. EA has pursued in-game advertising for decades, building ads into titles including Battlefield 2142, Need for Speed Carbon, Madden 08, and Skate, GameSpot noted. Those attempts have sometimes met resistance. When EA added pause-screen ads to UFC 4 in 2020, players objected, and the company removed them quickly.
The launch arrives as EA prepares to go private. The publisher is being acquired by a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, alongside Silver Lake and Affinity Partners, in an all-cash deal valued at about $55 billion. The transaction is a leveraged buyout, the largest on record, and carries significant debt, which has led observers to expect cost cuts and new revenue streams such as advertising to help service it.
EA said the ads are built for players and meant to add value rather than interrupt. The company has not detailed which titles beyond its sports games will carry the placements, or when players will begin to see them.
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