Activision’s Bobby Kotick, EA’s Andrew Wilson make Adweek’s top 100 leaders in media

EA’s and Activison’s bosses make the list.

Adweek’s 100 most influential leaders in marketing, media, and tech has a few notable gaming execs interspersed among the usual suspects — Activision CEO Bobby Kotick is at 27, and EA’s Andrew Wilson is at 58. The publication looked at company value, revenue, reach, and partnerships to generate these rankings to create its inaugural list — and it shows just how important gaming is when it comes to how consumers — and marketers and ad buyers — spend their dollars.

Kotick leads the gaming-specific leaders of the list. He heads up the company behind some of gaming’s top franchises, such as Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, and Skylanders. Adweek credits diversification and Kotick’s capability to continually create new revenue streams for the company for the placement.

Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson comes in a bit farther down the list. The Redwood City, Calif.-based company has revenues of $4.5 billion and has 8,400 employees. Wilson gets a nod for turning one of the least liked companies in media into a “solid hit-maker.” The company has several high-profile games lined up this year, including Star Wars: Battlefront and a new Need for Speed reboot.

Sony CEO and president Kazuo Hirai was one of the executives that made PlayStation a success in the West, and he barely squeezes into the list at No. 95. After his successes (and a few flubs) with Sony’s game division, he went to head up the entire company, taking over for Howard Stringer in 2012. But Hirai still has his eye on gaming, and he said that he would focus on that segment of Sony’s business to build profits.

And while they’re not gaming-specific, its interesting to note that the top players on the list all have their hands in gaming. Larry Page (Google CEO), Tim Cook (Apple CEO), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook CEO), and Robert Iger (Disney CEO) take the top four spots of the list, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is right below them at No. 10. Gaming settling into the mainstream only strengthens their positions on this list.