EA Says Developers Should Plan for In-Game Ads During Development

Electronic Arts wants studios to plan for in-game advertising while a game is still being built, not bolt it on afterward. That is the pitch from Alexander Dao, EA's VP of advertising and sponsorship, in an interview with The Game Business, where he laid out the company's new advertising platform and what he called a huge opportunity in PC and console games.

The scale is the reason EA is interested. On mobile, in-game ads generated around $55 billion in 2025 outside China, while PC and console games bring in very little by comparison. Dao's argument is that ads work better when they are part of the design from day one. Older titles force studios to retrofit the space; new games, and free-to-play experiences like EA's Skate, can be built to hold brands from the start.

"As you think about new games that are coming out... 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."

— Alexander Dao

The platform runs on EA's Frostbite engine and, for now, points mostly at the company's sports games. It lets advertisers place ads in spots like stadium billboards and convert existing ad assets into 3D objects inside the game. EA has also worked with the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Integral Ad Science to set common rules for how in-game ads appear and how their views are counted, which Dao expects to pull the rest of the industry along.

"When we think about in-game measurement and viewability standards, how do we make sure that's consistent so that when other publishers and platforms also do this... they're seeing consistency? Some of the things that we're doing here, I believe, will drive a bit more consistency and standardization."

— Alexander Dao

Sports is the easy case, since a billboard in a virtual stadium mirrors the real thing. The harder question is whether ads belong anywhere else, and Dao said it has to make sense for the game. He pointed to a tie-in with the accessories brand Coach in The Sims 4, where EA surveyed the community first, then let Coach drop its whole product line into the game for free rather than sell it. He said the socials lit up, EA's creators talked about it, and the press picked it up, and that the trick is reading each game on its own terms so a placement does not feel random.

He also said EA will drop placements that irritate players.

"If something isn't working and isn't landing the way that we thought it would, quite frankly, we just pull it."

— Alexander Dao

Not everyone in the business is sold. Take-Two boss Strauss Zelnick, asked about the idea earlier this year, was cool on it for premium games, arguing a stadium ad fits NBA 2K but is not a big earner and that anything more intrusive would cross a line.

"It's difficult for me to believe that we would want to have interstitial advertising in a game that someone paid $70 or $80 for. It would seem unfair."

— Strauss Zelnick

The push has backers too. Matthew Ball, now Xbox's chief strategy officer, has framed ads as a way to offer cheaper, ad-supported tiers alongside ad-free versions, the way Netflix and Disney Plus do, and has argued the money has to come from somewhere if players want steady output without price hikes or layoffs. Former BioWare developer Mark Darrah made a similar point, that product placement is still small in games next to film and television and could grow. The console track record is mixed: Capcom put ads into Street Fighter 5 in 2018 and pulled back after the reaction.

The money is the real engine. EA just posted a record $8 billion revenue year on the strength of EA Sports FC, Battlefield 6, and Apex Legends, and it did so while running repeated layoffs, some reportedly touching Battlefield staff even as that series drove the results. The contradiction, record profits alongside cuts, has become one of the most argued-about issues in the industry. Rising budgets are pushing the whole business toward recurring income, a point the former Dead Space producer made when he said single-player horror now needs something near 15 million sales to justify itself, which is why publishers keep steering toward live-service and mobile revenue instead.

That logic runs through EA's own slate. The ad tools live first in its sports lineup, including the well-reviewed EA Sports UFC 6 smooth launch, and EA is widely rumored to be building a Battlefield mobile game on Frostbite to reach players who never buy a full-price release. Ads, subscriptions, and mobile spinoffs are all versions of the same goal: money that keeps coming in after launch.

I don't mind ads in a sports game, because I'm used to brand boards ringside and mirroring a real stadium costs me nothing. The part that makes me wary is everything past sports, since EA is posting record revenue while it keeps cutting staff, and now it wants ads designed in from the start and standardized so rivals copy the approach. I can read this two ways, a sensible new revenue line or the first step toward ad breaks in a game someone already paid full price for, and EA has not shown yet which one it means to be.

Read also, 46 House Democrats have asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate the proposed $55 billion Saudi-led buyout of EA, warning that the debt behind the deal could push more layoffs and studio closures, and that new owners might pressure the inclusive content EA is known for in games like The Sims.