Hardcore privacy advocates might want to think twice about playing EA games in the future, per a recent press release fired off the starboard bow of the U.S.S. Electronic Arts corporate battleship. What EA legends does is summarized in this hilariously buzzword-laden sentence: “The insights suite aggregates metrics, brand impact, social buzz, ad effectiveness, and ROI across all of EA’s ad products and platforms." In other words, EA has came to the realization that they’ve got over 300 million players in their games worldwide, and will be providing marketers as much about you as they can to effectively run ad campaigns and dabble in other forms of sponsored content.
The motivation behind al this is actually fairly reasonable, even if it does feel a little creepy to know that EA is essentially analyzing you for maximum profits. With the rise in the popularity of gaming, combined with the forecast of EA increasing its audience reach by 30% this year, they think they’re going to have a real shot at competing directly with advertising dollars that would have traditionally been funneled into TV ads.
It makes sense too, as it’s not very hard to find someone in the advertising industry who is more than happy to tell you how the way lots of people are shifting how they’re entertained (as opposed to, say, sitting in front of the TV watching network programming for hours on end) is rapidly changing. As far as what information of yours EA will have access to and will be able to offer advertisers, we’ll have to wait to find out, it seems until EA Legend is premiered at the Advertising Week convention next week in New York City.
