Online game platform Roblox has released video advertising on its platform after six months beta testing with dentsu, Omnicom's Hearts & Science and Warner Bros. Pictures.
Roblox’s head of advertising strategic partnerships, Ashley McCollum, declined to reveal how much Roblox are charging for the ads but said the platform is “pricing competitively”.
“Because we have auction floor pricing just like all ad platforms, do agency upfronts, etc. there will be quite a range [in pricing] depending on targeting,” McCollum told AdNews.
“As the market continues to move more towards immersive 3D spaces, including via automated solutions, we are focused on meeting the market to enable scaled access to new advertising demand and monetization of our ads inventory.”
Although the video ads on Roblox aren’t currently clickable and are just a 'brand play' for now, advertisers can use ad content to share methods of contacting or discovering their business entities, products or services, or professional content.
The video ads come with expanded controls and features like genre targeting, brand suitability and an audience estimator.
IAB’s 2023 Game Advertising State of the Nation report, which surveyed 100 advertising decision makers working in agencies and brands in Australia, found 25% reported regular usage of gaming advertising, with 68% in total saying they had used game advertising in 2023.
More than half (52%) said they had increased gaming advertising activity over the past year with 72% intending to increase activity in 2024.
Avatars watching a video ad on Roblox
Co-founder of game monetisation and advertising platform iion, Giuseppe Martoriello, told AdNews earlier this year that the top environment where brands spend in the gaming space is around-the-game advertising.
“This includes leveraging traditional and familiar ad units such as banners, interstitials and rewarded video ads, which typically perform well in terms of reach, engagement and click-through rates. Advertisers also became more skilled at seamlessly integrating their messages into the gaming experience, effectively blurring the lines between advertising and gameplay," he said.
Earlier this year, Roblox conducted an audience impact and brand lift study with media and technology firm Latitude with 2,100 U.S. respondents which included multiple brands across different consumer categories.
Those early insights point to positive user reception of video ads: 75% of respondents said they were more likely to notice brands advertised on Roblox as compared to brands that advertise elsewhere. 73% said they see brands that advertise on Roblox as category leaders.
After viewing video ads on Roblox, users were also more likely to visit the advertisers’ experiences on Roblox (+10 percentage points), post about these brands on social media (+5 percentage points), follow them on social media and/or check out the brands’ websites (+4 percentage points) and look for more info about the advertised brands (+3 percentage points).
Video ads join the broader suite of Roblox’s Immersive Ads offerings that already include image ad formats and portal ads - a static, non-clickable image with a door that teleports users into an advertiser's experience.
Since portal ads launched in March 2023, brands that have leveraged portal ads saw over 90% of traffic coming from new users who have never engaged with their immersive experiences before.
There are other benefits for advertisers as well, like the ability for friends to join portalled visitors in branded experiences or people redeeming avatar items in those experiences later wearing them across the platform.
Avatars watching a video ad on Roblox
Integral Ad Science (IAS) is partnering with Roblox on a first-to-market integration to provide 3D in-experience Viewability and Invalid Traffic (IVT) measurement in complex environments. Advertisers on Roblox will get access to third-party measurement to verify that their Immersive Ads (video and image formats) are driving engagement with real users.
Brand Lift Solution with Kantar Context Lab will serve as an interim solution for brand lift studies utilising forced-exposure methodology for eligible video ads campaigns on Roblox, with Roblox offering full integrations with multiple brand lift partners for industry-standard passive measurement of ad campaigns in the near future.
And a partnership with PubMatic will help to enable the programmatic media buying for brands, while Roblox will gain scaled access to premium brand advertising demand.
McCollum said Roblox is seeing “strong growth” in APAC— both in terms of daily active users (DAUs) and hours engaged.
Per Roblox’s Q1 2024 shareholder’s letter, DAUs globally were 77.7 million (up 17% year over year) and hours engaged were 16.7 billion (up 15% year over year). McCollum said both DAUs and hours growth had particular strength in APAC.
“Global and international brands, including in APAC, are very excited to see this growth, and we’ve been pleasantly surprised with interest from this region. We’ve already seen some great brands from this region create a presence with immersive content on the platform, including the Australian Open, Hyundai and Singapore Tourism Board, among many others,” she said.
“Video ads are expanding opportunities to any brand to connect with our community, and we are excited to see the breadth of categories and brands expand on the platform — especially once programmatic media buying opens up to advertisers in the near future to seamlessly connect with their key audiences.”
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