The Roblox Corporation announced today that its video ads are opening up for all advertisers who wish to join. This allows brands to publish video ads for Roblox users to view or to engage with, without also having to create a large experience. Roblox is also introducing more controls, such as genre targeting and brand suitability, to its Ads Manager.
The video ads format offers brands an advertising route within Roblox that doesn’t require it to create custom 3D content, such as an immersive experience would. Roblox initially opened the immersive ads format to certain advertisers last year as a test of the format. Brands such as e.l.f. Beauty, Walmart and Warner Bros. Pictures used these forms of advertisement.
Stephanie Latham, Roblox’s VP of global brand partnerships, said in a statement, “By advertising on Roblox, brands can create deeper connections and engage tens of millions of Gen Z users who represent our top-spending demographic and spend millions of hours here daily connecting and exploring immersive experiences… Any brand can easily leverage our video ads in their campaigns, benefiting from a format built for this digitally savvy consumer generation that’s increasingly hard to reach through traditional and 2D media.”
How Roblox’s ad experience works
Roblox’s Immersive Ads format not only includes video ads, but portal and image ads as well. For brands, the platform offers several options for raising awareness and targeting specific audiences with its campaigns. Today, Roblox also announced new partnerships with IAS and Kantar to offer analytics and optimization for its brand partners.
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GamesBeat spoke with Enrico D’Angelo, Roblox’s VP of economy, about the benefits of using immersive video ads within the platform. “We like to think that our ads are additive to the experience, as opposed to blocking or delaying content… We think this is a wonderful new avenue for developers to engage and monetize, and for advertisers to reach a highly coveted audience like Gen Z with an exciting new format.” He also cited a recent Latitude study, which found that the majority of respondents said they were more likely to notice or engage with brands that advertised on Roblox.
According to D’Angelo, this is part of Roblox’s long-term strategy to incorporate brands’ e-commerce into the Roblox platform. As he told GamesBeat, “We want Roblox to become a platform where brands can run their core business. If you sell shoes or movie tickets or food, we want you to be able to sell them on Roblox. In the long-term, we want Roblox to be that platform where you’re running your business, the same way you would on an app or a website.”