Roblox courts advertisers with fresh data on its ad effectiveness

Marketers have welcomed the additional transparency from the platform, but say Roblox will need to move beyond emotional response metrics if it wants to unlock deeper ad investment. 

Roblox’s eye-tracking research, which analyzed the activity of 140 U.S. Roblox users between the ages of 13 and 34, measured users’ visual attention, as well as physical responses such as “micro-changes in sweat activity,” while they engaged with Roblox ads, ads on other platforms and different combinations of ad formats. The study indicated that users’ attention to branded content was 100 times higher on Roblox than social ads and 35 times higher than streaming TV ads, according to numbers shared by a company representative. 

The study also found that participating in a branded Roblox experience resulted in a 211-percent increase in unaided brand recall versus social ads, as well as a 95 percent lift compared to streaming TV. (A Roblox representative said that the comparison was made between Roblox ads and “a typical scrolling experience with in-feed ads,” though they declined to name the company.)

Marketers with expertise in the gaming space, including Don McLean, director of gaming agency services at Dentsu, Sami Barnett, senior director of gaming at TMA and Dario Raciti, the director of Omnicom’s gaming and esports group Zero Code, agreed that their clients would find Roblox’s research findings compelling enough to potentially up their spending on the platform.

“Brand recall and recognition frequently come up in conversation when discussing research studies, and since Dentsu does so much with the attention economy, I think this eye-tracking data is also good to keep in our back pocket,” McLean said. “Depending on the teams involved, these may complement and help fuel their narrative.”

However, agency marketers see Roblox’s research report as just the start of a long road to educate brands — not a quick fix for the platform’s ongoing struggle to unlock ad spend. To more firmly convince brands of the platform’s value, they said Roblox would need to explore other metrics such as direct sales conversions, which would more effectively demonstrate the impact of newer features such as Roblox’s Shopify e-commerce integration.

“The brands I work across are focused on ability to drive sales outcomes (exacerbated by economic conditions and reduced consumer spending),” said Boaz Burns, associate director of innovation at the media agency Carat. “Attention scores are certainly important, but it’s a very small piece of the decision-making matrix.”

Roblox global head of brand insights and measurement Allison McDuffee said to Digiday that the company chose to focus on emotional engagement and brand recall as a “first step in deeper understanding of how immersive 3D environments are different from other digital content.” She noted Roblox’s partnership with Google to offer rewarded video adds, announced last month, as an example of Roblox’s continued expansion of its measurement capabilities.

“We have started with key metrics such as brand suitability, age verification, and brand lift, as well as programmatic measurement through DSP tools such as DV360, and we are also planning to expand both our 1P and 3P measurement in the future to help brands understand how their activations connect to sales outcomes,” McDuffee said.

Last week’s NewFronts event was part of Roblox’s ongoing campaign to strengthen its ties with members of the Roblox advertising ecosystem — creators, advertisers and studios — in part to address brands’ confusion over the multitude of advertising options in the space, as well as Roblox creator studios’ frustrations over their increasing competition against Roblox itself for brands’ marketing dollars.

“This research stems from our overall commitment to ensuring that brands can plan, measure, and verify their marketing and media investments on Roblox,” McDuffee said. “We also want brands to have a clear understanding of how immersive 3D media on the platform can help connect to brand outcomes. This is a new area of research as 3D immersive spaces are becoming an increasingly important way of connecting people, especially Gen Z consumers.”

Roblox also shared data showing the impact of the platform’s ads when combined with other channels. When combined with social, Roblox ads led to a 292 percent increase in brand recall versus social alone, and Roblox ads mixed with streaming TV caused a 107 percent increase in recall when compared against streaming alone, according to the report. This positioning highlights Roblox’s continued push to position itself as a creator platform, rather than a video game, in the eyes of advertisers — even when many marketers still view other gaming platforms such as Fortnite and Minecraft as its direct competitors.

“It’s interesting that they chose to pair with social and streaming TV for some of the results, versus trying to compare to other gaming platforms,” Raciti said. “We would probably see similar lifts from a few others, given the same scenario.”