Why Gaming Is the New Front Door to Fandom and How EA Built Its Ad Platform | Alexander Dao, VP of Advertising at EA

Gaming Is The New Attention Engine

Tim Rowe 0:45

What if I told you that up to 40% of soccer fans actually fell in love with sport by playing a video game? When modern audiences are trading passive television broadcasts for highly interactive console gaming, how do advertisers effectively tap into that massive share of living room attention? And what happens to conversion rates when a brand like Domino's skips the commercial break entirely to offer free pizza directly to players mid-game? Today I sit down with Alexander Dao from EA Sports to break down the official launch of the EA advertising platform. We discuss how in-game advertising has evolved from static background logos into dynamic, highly targeted brand experiences. We also walk through real-world case studies from Visa, Red Bull, and Domino's and explore why console gaming is quickly becoming one of the most powerful, under - addressed performance channels in the digital ecosystem. Make sure you hit that subscribe button so you never miss an episode. Now, onto the conversation.

Why EA Launches An Ad Platform

Tim Rowe 1:58

And ads. Advertising is coming to EA Sports, but really it's always been there. It's been like a native part of the gaming experience. Welcome to the State of Streaming Podcast.

Alexander Dao 2:07

Excited to be here, happy to chat through all things EA, EA sports, advertising, you know, the value that we're bringing to players. I appreciate the time today.

Tim Rowe 2:16

Absolutely. And would love to get into your background a little bit. You come at this from a consumer perspective. And I think that's really interesting. But maybe set a baseline, like why ads and why now for EA?

Alexander Dao 2:29

My background, most of my background has been working at consumer platforms, where the consumer was at the front and center of every experience that we develop on the advertising side. And so as we think about the opportunity and why now for EA, well, when you think about what's happening and where consumers are spending their time, right? They're spending their time on connected TV, they're spending their time on social, they're watching sports, sports is growing. These are all things that intersect with gaming. And you take a look at the time spent in gaming, and it's one of the fastest growing mediums because it allows people to actually feel that fandom that they have, right? Like you're you're an NFL fan, or you know, you are a soccer fan. Engaging with our games is a way for you to deepen that fandom. And actually, what we're seeing is, especially for the younger generations, EA sports is that front door to fandom. You know, it's no longer a ticket to the game. The controller is actually where fandom starts. We've even commissioned some studies on our own. ESPN did some studies, and it showed that for soccer, like 35 to 40% of fans actually became fans through our games. Right. And so it's so cool to say is like not only are we like creating more fans for the sport, but you know, for the most passionate fans, we're allowing them to get deeper and deeper into the experience and so and that stands out to me.

Tim Rowe 3:50

My son's 13 and he's a gamer, and he was so excited to hear that we're talking today. He immediately jumped on his PlayStation, he was playing uh NCAA. But something that I've heard even from other parents is how their kids are becoming fans of sports, and like they don't even know how how does my kid know so much about soccer? Like they don't even watch soccer, and it is so much through gaming and really becoming like a portal for discovery. You talked there about the time spent and engagement. I think I've seen some interesting data from your team about the relationship of the game being played and then the game being watched. Are you seeing that? Are you seeing a relationship between what we're doing on the console and then the actual game itself on TV?

How Games Create Sports Fans

Tim Rowe 4:35

Alexander Dao 4:36

Yeah, definitely. Like if you think about the modern sports fan, they are passive, active, and interactive, right? Like they're passive by watching broadcasts. What we're actually seeing is like sports fans, well, they have a higher likelihood of actually playing the sport themselves, right? And when we see them playing our games, they also have a higher likelihood of playing the actual sport itself. Oh wow. So that's the active piece. And the interactive piece, and that's part of the difference between gaming and sports gaming versus you know watching a broadcast is that it is interactive, right? You you can actually learn so much more about the sport because now you understand the players, their skills, different moves that they make. You can construct your own team, you understand like the different team dynamics and how to be a coach. And so there's so many different ways that you can kind of engage and build this interactivity that just really feels like sports fandom itself.

What In-Game Ads Look Like

Alexander Dao 5:30

Tim Rowe 5:30

Thinking about that, there were a few case studies that stood out, and maybe they'll be good to kind of articulate what we mean by ads in the game. I've got Visa here, I've got Coach, I've got Lowe's, three different examples. But can you maybe walk us through what the advertising experience actually looks like? How do I experience that?

Alexander Dao 5:49

Yeah, and you know, a good thing to note is um, you know, my my background, as mentioned, has always been on focusing on the consumer experience. And as we think about the advertising opportunity, we think about it the same way. It's like it always has to be driven on what value can this drive for our players. And so I think about it in different buckets. I'm gonna start with authenticity. As a sports fan, whether you're at a live match or you're watching the broadcast, you're used to seeing brands around the ad boards uh and around the edge and in the broadcast placements. You're used to seeing brands on the jerseys and the team kits. And so what we did was we made that available, right? Instead of generic kind of logos and things that are out there, we actually brought in real world sponsors into our game, into all these authentic environments. So that that added authenticity into our game. The second area that we wanted to do is figure out well, what do players actually want in-game? They want to compete, they want to progress, they want to be able to like up-level and get new skills. And so what we did was we figured out, all right, can brands help them do this? And so you brought up Visa and Red Bull. Well, this is the way we did it with them. With with Visa, we had players create squad building challenges where if that was completed, they then had the opportunity to play in a live tournament in a Visa branded stadium, right? And then decked out with Visa jerseys and vanity kits, uh, but all things we know like players love, right? And it was all brought to you by Visa. Red Bull did the same thing: vanity kits, things in game, custom stadium. But Red Bull then said, Well, what if we brought this into the real world? What if we actually created a tournament called the Winx Cup and we actually brought it to different universities? We had this be a global tournament, and then we would fly the winners to the finals in Miami. Let's take it a step further. What if we actually put FC and a QR code on retail cans globally and it hit retail stores in hundreds of countries, hundreds of millions of cans that are out there with a QR code that a player can scan and unlock content in FC. And so these are all things that like players just got super excited about and like they're asking more of. If you listen to the social chatter, they're buzzing about it. And so that that hits on that second bucket around, you know, how do we just create more excitement and engagement for our players and having brands come in and do that for them?

Tim Rowe 8:24

More than like just a generic ad, like, hey, I can put an ad in front of someone who's on a console playing a game. That is through to EA's core ethos of like, if it's in the game, it's in the game. Now you are the game, like you are part of this entire end-to-end experience from what's on the Red Bull can to my participation in the event to the live finals and trying to trying to get there myself. Like that's a that's a pretty neat thing to be able to experience as a player. So, what what's the feedback been like from the brand perspective, from the from the user perspective? What are you hearing?

Alexander Dao 8:58

You know, I think from the brand perspective, yeah, these brands are used to sponsoring or being a part of these sports in the real world. You know, they're they're used to showing up in the broadcast placements. But with gaming, with them coming in, they're able to build interactivity in a way where they can't anywhere else, right? Because the level and depth of engagements and the types of things that they're able to do and that interaction with the community, like that's what actually drives brand affinity and brand love, right? Because you're not just seeing a logo somewhere passively, you're actually interacting with the association with that brand is now so positive. You know, you're passionate about the sport, you're passionate about the game, and this brand is just making your life better and more exciting by all these experiences that they're bringing into it. And so the brand uh receptivity has been like really positive if we design and do this in the right way. And players have been positive too. You know, we're constantly listening to what players are saying, what they want more of. You know, like we've heard a lot of feedback from players on like these are the things we'd love to see more of or do. And you know, that that's how we think about the strategy for advertising is doing more and more that's driving value for our players, and then ultimately that value for our advertisers.

Why Brands And Players Say Yes

Tim Rowe 10:12

So, how do you lead that conversation then with an advertiser? Is it gaming? Is it out of home? Is it experiential? Is it connected TV? Like what is it? I guess it could be a lot of things to a lot of people, but but how do you navigate that?

Alexander Dao 10:26

I can kind of tell you the front to there's certain companies where gaming's definitely on their radar, like they're they're they they feel endemic to gaming and you know they've they've cracked the code on it. But by and large, I think most marketers, they've either tried gaming or they don't know how to operate within there, or it's like it's it's really hard because it's custom, maybe it's really expensive, but you know, they haven't been able to find a way to scale it. And so what we've really done with EA advertising is we we we set to change a lot of that. We've launched our ad platform, which integrates across multiple titles that created more dynamic capabilities that marketers can then go in and out of. So these ad boards that I was talking about around the pitch, the broadcast placements, those are all dynamic. So I think that opened it up a little bit more. But we've also had to educate the market. Say, well, you know what? Like if you're already invested in these sports, you already have licenses with some of these leagues or teams or players, this becomes a natural extension of that. Take that license and let's figure out how to like build an interactive experience for you in our games through that licensing. And then for folks who maybe they don't have the licenses, we have modes or areas within our game that are unlicensed, right? Like in FC, the ultimate team is EA IP. That's all EAs like unlicensed environments that we start to bring other brands in that maybe they're not completely endemic

Dynamic Targeting And Easier Buying

Alexander Dao 11:52

to the sport, but it becomes an opportunity for them to kind of get in front of that audience. And so we started to tap into more of the sports sponsors and uh and brands. But broadly, you know, one of the things that we are trying to educate on is like, well, you know, don't just treat it as like gaming. And even within gaming, it's you know, there's there's a lot of flavors to it. Think about it as a way for you to invest in sports. Think about it as a way for you to get in front of a premium audience that's highly engaged, right? You know, you mentioned CTV and CTV and console gaming, it shows up in the same premium environment, right? The difference is interactivity versus passive. And so I think just changing some of the awareness and ways that brands can get into this environment has really helped us, you know, partner and bring more good brands uh into the experience.

Tim Rowe 12:44

It's very exciting. Can you talk to me maybe for a minute about the workflow for those brands that don't have those existing licenses or they don't, it's not you're not a global brand like Red Bull that could activate something like this. What does the workflow look like for advertisers that do want to be in front of the audience and maybe take advantage of the ability to be dynamic?

Alexander Dao 13:05

We have made it easier, thankfully. You know, on one end of the spectrum, you heard about the Red Bull and the Visa's. But maybe brands don't have the capability to go that big. And so what we what we've done is we now give them the opportunity to create an easier entry point into our games because it's dynamic. So if a brand wants to come in and say, hey, we're only interested in reaching players in Canada, we now have the ability for them to target just Canada and then run it for two weeks, run it for a month, you know. Before they would have had to activate against all of our global players for the entire life cycle of the game, purely because of our ability to segment now and you know, go my country, have shorter flight dates. It creates a different kind of price entry point from brands to get in.

Tim Rowe 13:54

Opening up, I'm sure, a whole new world of brands and advertisers that can now participate, really democratizing the EA platform to lots of interesting use cases.

Measurement Plus The Domino’s Test

Tim Rowe 14:04

How about measurement? I know that's probably the the harder question to answer in this equation, but but how do you approach that conversation with an advertiser?

Alexander Dao 14:14

Yeah, so measurement, there's a couple different ways that we look at it. I mean, one of the first things we did, because when you think about advertising and gaming, especially on the console side, most of the gaming ad formats are custom, right? Where it doesn't look similar across games. You know, it's formats, it shows up a little bit different. And so one of the things we did was we partnered with the IAB. And the IAB helped us create standardization within gaming, where the impressions that we share out on like how many times a brand is showing up is now standardized with the IAB. So that was the first kind of like reporting and measurement. It's like, well, how many times are you actually showing up? And is it something standardized that by a third party that is believable and that we can digest? So that's one. The second is we also on the more kind of mid-fundal engagement, we will also share well, how many times did somebody wear your jersey? How many times did they equip it? How many games was it played in, and then how many impressions did that generate? We will also deploy like various surveys and brand lift studies, depending on like the activation, and then social listening tools. You know, when we when we run something, how much are people talking about it, how much of it is positive and neutral? And then, like, is the brand actually seeing a lift in like positive mentions because of the activation and experience that we're doing together? And so we're doing uh quite a bit of that. The other things we're starting to to do a little bit or test two is you know, we had a really cool activation with Domino's. They wanted to figure out a way to reward players and the most competitive players who were, you know, competing in FC on Friday night, but maybe they forgot to have dinner. So Domino's messaged all of our FC players and gave them free pizza.

Tim Rowe 16:03

Oh, get out of here.

Alexander Dao 16:04

Yeah. Which was uh you know, I'm sure you can imagine the players loved it. And so there was a code in there that players took, they put it into their checkout, and the Domino's was able to say, well, you know, how many people actually got the free pizza and how many people are Domino's customers before, how many of them are new. So we're starting to test and do cool things like that. But uh the Domino's execution was uh was an awesome one.

What’s Next And How To Connect

Tim Rowe 16:27

That's very cool. And this is all still pretty new, right? This just launched earlier in the summer back in June.

Alexander Dao 16:34

Yeah, so uh the official launch of EA advertising was in June during Cannes Lion. And um, before that, you know, we did have some sponsorships that we did, but a a lot of the announcement centered around the launch of our platform, right? And now the ability to have all these dynamic targeting, better measurement. It's still still relatively new in that space. We're building fast, expect more sophistication and announcements to come in the future, but uh it's exciting early days for us.

Tim Rowe 17:00

Yeah, I'm excited that we got to have this conversation early on. We'll be able to look back, uh, look back in time. What are you most excited about over the next 18 to 24 months?

Alexander Dao 17:09

You know, there's such a big opportunity within gaming and like the size of the audience, the time that's spent there. You know, I think if you if you take a look back in history of where marketing and advertising has grown rapidly, it's where people spent their time, right? People spent their time in social media, people spend their time streaming and you know, watching CTV, people spent their time retail media and shopping. People spend a lot of their time gaming. And it's an ever-growing kind of uh industry. And so what I'm excited for is to watch this industry grow. I'm excited for you know more and more companies, not just EA, to continue to invest in making marketers' lives easier by investing in more standardization and tools. But it's gonna be a fast-growing space and it's exciting to be at the center of it.

Tim Rowe 18:01

So you still see this as we're pretty early.

Alexander Dao 18:03

Yeah, we're we're we're we're early, and I think there's uh you know a ways to go.

Tim Rowe 18:08

I think that's gonna be exciting for a lot of folks listening to this episode. Alex, if folks want to get in touch with yourself, learn more about the product, the team, everything, stay in touch with uh with yourself and EA. How do they do that?

Alexander Dao 18:21

Well, you know, when we announced the launch of EA Advertising, we also launched the EA advertising website. So how about that? Yeah. So if folks just want to take a look, they can search EA Advertising, go to our website. There's a contact form there. As always, you know, people can try to reach out directly. They can add me on LinkedIn. Always happy to chat with the right folks.

Tim Rowe 18:42

Awesome. Alex, thank you so much for being here. We'll have to do that. We're gonna check back maybe a year from now and see how things have progressed from our perspective here at State of Streaming. We see console TV as maybe one of the biggest underaddressed opportunities. So we are long EA unofficially, not financial advice for any of the legal heads out there. But we are very excited about where this is headed. And can't thank you enough for being here.

Alexander Dao 19:08

Yeah, well, appreciate you having me. Great conversation and would love to kind of check back in the future as we continue to grow this, uh, grow this industry. We'll do just that.

Tim Rowe 19:16

And if you found this conversation to be helpful, please share it with a colleague or a client and start a conversation yourself today. We'll see you all next time.