Ads come to Roblox | WARC | The Feed
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Ads come to Roblox
Interest in the metaverse may have waned, but world-building game/platform Roblox is working to bring biddable ads to its popular virtual spaces as the company expands its options for brands to full advertising.
First reported by the Wall Street Journal, Roblox will work with PubMatic, an ad tech firm, to help advertise to its 70m+ daily active users.
Why ads on Roblox matter
Previously, brand engagement with Roblox was quite involved, meaning that it was unlikely a brand would include some Roblox activity in its general media mix. The availability of in-game inventory through an online bidding process changes that entirely.
Roblox is in many ways ahead of its category. Major players that once required users to invest heavily in games and hardware are shifting to cloud-based platforms, of a Roblox variety, as a big addressable market and media business become more attractive.
What’s going on
Brands will now be able to buy virtual billboard ads on Roblox through PubMatic to be shown to players who are 13 years or older. Broken up into mini-games within games (called ‘realms’ in the Roblox parlance), creators of those realms will receive a cut of the ad revenue.
Brands in gaming
Roblox reported 69 brand deals in its Q4 results, announced in February, so brands in its environment are not new. What’s different is the scale at which inventory will be available and the relative ease of the ad buying process.
Around 58% of its 71m daily users are addressable (over 13). This is good for Roblox as older users tend to spend more on the platform directly and it offers a large and important audience to advertisers.
Advertising has long looked to the booming popularity of gaming. Increasingly, important data and best practices are emerging about how to engage this critical audience.
Sourced from the WSJ, WARC
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