I’ve been working on the game for around 6 months now, and last weekend I decided it was time for release. I uploaded 50k robux into the Sponsored ad manager, and made an ad for 110 ad credits. I’ve never used the Sponsored Ad system before, although I did use the old sponsorship ads in the past, and low amounts of Robux got me a decent amount of visits. Although, I wasn’t very well funded (and the games were also a buggy mess) so they didn’t do very well. I tried researching advertisement methods and what worked for others, but found nothing that could help, The ads weren’t working at first, so I decided to make another ad for 50 credits (this wasn’t the smartest decision, but after I made this ad the other one started working so I’m not sure if it was a bug or some other kind of issue.) I’ve read posts about having a CTR of 0.6-1% were good on Roblox, but I’m not sure if this data was correct.
Here is the stats from my 110 ad credit sponsorship-
The rest of the ad credits purchased with the 50k was meant to be ran throughout the week to help build a player base, but I was so lost with my stats from before that I was scared to throw away ad credits. I’ve received feedback from players and friends about how the game is fun, so where did I go wrong? I can’t tell if this is an issue with the game, the marketing plan, or just the Roblox system itself.
I’m unsure if I will continue with the project or work on something new for the summer, but how can I improve the game to work better in the algorithm? Additionally, how should I have carried out the ad campaign to garner a larger amount of attention from Roblox?
ads suck, I found a sponsored ad method that works better, first when your sponsoring your gonna want to do a daily budget of 5, and make the ad run for 2 days do a bid from 0.04 to 0.08
you can keep doing this over an over and it really works, but I wouldn’t say its the best, I spent about 9k total on sponsors on my elevator game and it got 5.4k visits in only 4 days. overall the new ad manager is very bad and I dont recommend spending the money on it if you dont have it.
Ah, thanks for the advice. I heard the new ad system was bad, but I didn’t think it would be this bad. I’ll be sure to try this method out for my later games.
Sorry for all the questions, but do you know of a better way to advertise since the Roblox platform itself doesn’t seem to be the best?
if im being honest, your best chance of making a viral game is making videos out of it on platforms like TikTok and shorts on yt, like I’ve seen people blow up there games just by adding funny clips into the game and they also make the game look very engaging to play. you can probably also make quick cash grab meme games or just things kids like for example I made a game called “pomni elevator” and from the game I made almost 10k just from 5k visits. I hope that helps and sorry because im kinda bad at explaining things
What was your bid set to? If you set the bid too high, it’s going to cost a lot per play.
I also notice your play rate is quite poor, with only 1 in 8 people who click actually pressing play. You might want to try and improve your game description and thumbnails. Some people might be turning away because of the low player counts, so perhaps you could offer a release reward for early players.
In my experience, it takes around 30k-50k visits before Roblox starts organically recommending your game, so you still have a while to go.
The game seems to be a purely PVP-centric game, so the game is only engaging when you’re playing with other players, which can create a problem; nobody plays because there’s no other players, but there’s no other players because nobody plays. Etc.
It may help to add NPCs of some kind to practice combat on, even if they’re pretty simple and don’t have the best AI or aren’t able to use ALL the spells/skills players can; just having something for players to do in an empty server can keep a player engaged for a while, and someone else who clicks on the ad will see “Ah, there’s another guy in the game, maybe I can join them and see what the game is about.”, and it can build from there.
For example, my own in-development PvP game “Galactic Conquest” (Shameless plug incoming!)
I’ve opted to make it so both teams have “bots” that fill empty slots in a server, but their AI is pretty simple, and they can only play as the “Assault” class (they also don’t use sidearms or throw grenades, but it’s still pretty fun to destroy them and despite my game still being pre-alpha and having NO ads or marketing done, it sometimes gets 1-2 daily players and has had about 250 visits so far.)
I won’t say this is a “magic bullet”, but it can help a bit since you seem to have a weird disparity between CTR (people who click on the ad) and Plays (people who actually play the game after clicking on the ad). It may also help to have more “engaging” thumbnails; something that shows a potential player what your game actually looks like in-motion; with people using various spells and fighting each other and whatnot, along with a short video that shows actual gameplay.
No! You made your CPM bid only 0.01 which means you basically lose every auction, and will get minimal impressions. Normally, you should get a huge refund soon since your Robux was basically rarely used.
My bid was set to 0.05. I did notice that this game had a lower play rate than my other ads, so I’ll be improving my thumbnails and see if this has an impact.
As for reaching the 30k-50k, would I just have to pump more money into the game until it reaches this thresh hold?
Yeah, let’s just blindly blame Ad Manager for 0.7% CTR and 0.08% (???) playrate. Dev definitely didn’t do anything wrong here, certainly researched his audience, designed store assets well and targetted properly.
Honestly, after seeing the ad stats I expected absolute trash of a game with terrible store assets, but after checking everything out, I was surprised to see that both store page and the game itself look and play pretty well. Obviously, lack of single player is a big issue, but that’s where Sponsorship should help.
What kind of audience did you target? Hopefully, you’re not selecting both genders for a fighting game. Obviously, your icon is bad, no matter the targetting. You should aim for at least 2% CTR, although it varies with platforms. Not sure where you got 0.6-1% from, you might be mixing up User Ads with Sponsorships.
The problem with both thumbnail and your icon that they are extremely generic and don’t show what type of game it is. Build in thumbnail is nice, but a calm waterfall doesn’t tell visitor “intense magical fights”. Look at other anime/fighting games and check how they present themselves. Neither face in the icon nor the title tells me that this is a fighting game, so obviously people don’t click it or click and don’t get what they expect.
Also, don’t throw more than 20 credits in a sponsorship without testing your icon and store assets first. You also can pause the sponsorship if you see that stats (CTR, Playrate) are bad and you will get back the remaining credits after time ends.
Game looks solid, just work on the store presentation.
Thanks for the feedback. I’ve been working on new thumbnails/icons.
I did select both genders, since I have friends of both genders who play games of these types. Would it be better to just do 1 gender? I didn’t think it mattered since the more awareness the better.
Your goal is to get as many clicks as possible that would convert to as many plays as possible. Girls are much less likely to be interested in an anime fighting game and even if they reach gameplay, they won’t stay in for long. If you don’t believe it, you can have two separate ad sets in the same campaign separate by gender and compare the stats.
