When it comes to the coveted 18 to 34 year-old male demographic, video games have never held more sway than they do right now. For EA s new Global Media Sales team Senior VP Dave Madden, he sees real opportunities among EA’s 233 million game users, such as the ability to target a female-focused casual demographic like Pogo.com with 10 million unique visitors per month.
With EA being leader in terms of audience and reach and its line-up of product and IP, there s an opportunity to make EA a leader in getting brands involved with video games, said Madden. EA has started to take some of its top IPs cross-platform across social, mobile, online, and console games.”
EA Sports FIFA 11 is one of the company’s most diverse IP. While there’s been 12.5 million console units console units sold, there are also 5 million mobile downloads of the game, 5 million registered PC users and a Facebook game.
Brands and advertisers doing stuff in sports on TV want to go to where gamers are playing and IPs like FIFA, Need for Speed, or Madden are perfect for them because they re engaging games that are available everywhere consumers are gaming, said Madden. We re making it easier for advertisers to plan and buy across our catalog.
With EA s audience, there are more gamers playing the same game across multiple games during prime time than a network is going to get with a hit show. This will unlock bigger and bigger budgets. Advertisers want to place buys and know what the results are going to be. And we ll be able to show them results, he said, adding, It s already happening today, it s just a matter of scale and standardizing the media to make the metrics more like traditional media so advertisers can understand the numbers. That s when you re going to see buckets of money.
A recent example of brand integration noted was an alliance with Toyota Prius and the Facebook Monopoly Millionaires game. They added the Toyota Eco House to the game allows users to share it amongst their friends and promotes the green message of the Prius.
Virtual goods are a great way for brands to connect with a user and earn positive association, said Madden. With more social and mobile games turning to free-to-play, micro-transaction business models, brands can step in and offer Facebook credits or virtual goods directly to the gamer for free. We had great success using this at WildTangent over the last five years.
Source: Forbes
