Immersive Ads Publisher Learnings and Insights

So true. I’m sure that there’s never once been an image ad created. It’s not worth it.

But… it clearly is, since there’s no demand. You can have such a low bid for it. Why not?

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I only see placeholder images on immersive ad billboards, not sure they work.

We tried them in one of our top experiences. The best day we saw, was a day where we had 180,000 DAU - but only 700 immersive ad impressions. This made us 36 Robux (12 cents).

So even if this scales by a factor of 100 (and this could take years), that’s still only making us $12 a day from ads.

I know this post is claiming to be transparent but it feels like it’s an attempt to get more people using ads which aren’t taking off. There’s no transparency as to what % cut Roblox is taking from ads.

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You can jus add the sponsor games, and ad clicks to our games and give us % cut of their bid.

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Yeah I completely don’t get it. I was actually very hyped and excited for this feature as its a great tool for smaller creators to monetize and it doesn’t even work…

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the pdf they attached gave numbers quoting that the top 50 experiences gained less than 1% of revenue thru immersive ads so this totally checks out. I dont see why there is any share to begin with especially for something so niche

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How can it?

Discovery of new “experiences” is already terrible.

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I’m sitting here wondering why Roblox’s website is still decade out-of-date. I wish they’d reference Steam on how to make a proper game/experience page, and what kind of search functionality needs to exist. Including restoring genres and adding a tag system that actually works. Even on the catalog, it’s spammed with color variants because nobody had the idea to make it possible to put color variants into the same item page.

But instead of improving the website at all, it took months to decide on “Larger tiles to better engage users”:

I don’t think it takes a UI designer to realize how messy the discovery page looks. Having rows of experiences like that is not appealing. Please let us actually discover new experiences using proper search filters.

I’m happy about most of the updates coming to the platform and the engine, but the website is horribly lacking.

Also forgot to mention that a review system would also be lovely. Simple likes and dislikes tells very little. I think this is especially important for the developer marketplace, but still important for game/experience pages.

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seeing similar numbers here, on our best day about a week ago:
with 1 image display ad and 180k DAU, we got 4000+ impressions, earning us 300 robux ($1), with our experience having 50% >13 players.

  1. Having used another ad service provider in the past and comparing the rates, the payout we get here is frankly - no other way to put it - miniscule.
  2. I echo the need for more transparency on the % of the cut, other services do it, you can do it too Roblox.

Just for some positives looking forward -
It does seem like there isn’t much supply for image ad and that might partially explain the low payout at least for image ads.
Coming from mobile game development, I can see video ads taking the place of image ads in the future which should offer better payouts. At that point, we could potentially implement incentivized ads views where players can opt to click on a video to play in exchange for in-game rewards. This makes the experience less disruptive and more of a win-win relationship between the game and the player.

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Teleport portals are the way to go but for the past 3 or so days all my stats have been 0, pretty much as soon as this dev forum article came out. I wonder if they are revisiting the ad program and making some adjustments… or Spotify and Walmart gave up being the only ones even advertising.

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I read the full report and it’s very confusing imo, it says that there was ’ No Statistically Significant Impact on User Retention’, but isn’t this the point of ads to retain users? It basically says the immersive ads made no difference to whether or not a player returns to the game, but then it mentions a back button feature that sees 50% chance the player will return, so which is it? It just seems like you are pointing out how the ads didn’t have a negative affect, but did they have any positive affects? Otherwise what is the point of them.

It also seems like the general audience for who will be using these ads are real life brands or already established experiences which doesn’t necessarily mean they are benefiting independent or upcoming creators, which can be seen by the lack of revenue earned. It just seems like they are there to give these already established brands/experiences more attention imo.

It’s also confusing to me to see terms like ‘auction’ used in a report about ads since I would not associate that with the Roblox advertising system.

Overall the immersive ads seem like they could be a good idea but there needs to be more transparency on revenue, as well as how effective they actually are for creators on Roblox in general not just specific experiences.

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When will small developers such as myself, have access to implant immersive ads? I put dozens of immersive models and with myself only to find my game does not qualify for it. Is there a certain quota your game needs to reach to qualify? So far, all the posts I read from roblox are not specific regarding this issue.

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Agreed, discovery for new experiences with not many players is pretty much impossible without a massive budget and/or some connections to people who might be able to get them some publicity. I’ve seen small teams and singular developers make some incredible work which will never be appreciated by most random people.

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Hi Developers,

First off - I’d like to give a HUGE thank you to you all for diving into our document and for not holding back in the comments – we’ve been soaking it all up! Your unwavering enthusiasm for Roblox does not go unnoticed, and we’re wholeheartedly thankful for the support, understanding, and curiosity you continually bring to our community.

In our dedication to improving transparency, here are some responses to the vital points you brought up in the comments:

1. Retention in the Publishing Experience: Our report focused on the impact of immersive ads on user retention within the publisher experience (where the ad is served), not the advertiser experience. Initial findings indicate that these ads do not deter players from returning to the experience where the portal ad was shown. This is encouraging news, as it suggests that the immersive ads do not negatively impact retention of the publisher experience.
2. Positive Early Results: We are pleasantly surprised about the positive results of the experiment, yet cautiously optimistic that it’s early days and these metrics may fluctuate. We will be sharing future installments of this document and adding more reporting in the Creator Dashboard to help you make informed decisions.
3. Upcoming Features/Updates: Anticipating the future, several updates slated for the coming year will include:

  1. Enabling experiences compliant with Experience Guidelines to become immersive ads publishers.
  2. Enriching publisher reporting with “Return Rates” and additional metrics.

4. Revenue Share: Despite our decision to not disclose specific revenue share earnings - given their dynamic nature, influenced by supply and demand variables - please know our ultimate aim at Roblox remains to maximize payouts to our developer community.

Please keep the feedback and comments flowing - we’re listening! Thanks.

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This isn’t acceptable and just confirms to me that the percentage cut Roblox takes must be so bad that they’d rather sacrifice transparency for their own pockets.

Based on the minimum CPM and CPT roblox is charging on their ads manager;

  • Minimum Cost Per Teleport
    image

  • Minimum Image CPM
    image

and the revenue we recieve;

shows me that Roblox is taking over a 95% cut of immersive ad revenue, this is unacceptable and unfair.

Clearly not if Roblox is taking a 95% cut of earnings.

This goes directly against what is said earlier;

No, the number one thing that should be added first and foremost is Minimum Payout Settings for developers, I’m not willing to let brands/roblox get away with sending my users away for such pathetic rates.

I don’t even get why this post was made, this doesn’t add anything new to the conversation, nor answer any of our questions and is just a repost of the original topic. :man_facepalming:

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Isn’t sharing the amount of money you are keeping the bare minimum you can do in regards to transparency? I understand there are complexities involved but that doesn’t give you a valid excuse to just not even attempt to provide at least some revenue share data.

As @OutlookG more eloquently states the data we have suggest Roblox is keeping a very large majority of the cut. ‘Trust us that we are paying you fairly’ isn’t going to cut it.

If you truly want transparency, I urge that this data is shared. Otherwise, I don’t think anyone is going to take Roblox’s stance on transparency seriously.

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Is apple is one of the companys that is in the image or video ads?

Don’t forget about the ad pricing ‘float’ mentioned in the earnings call before the most recent one.

Also hopefully the requirements/restrictions will be clarified too in terms of who will get to use immersive advertising at the jump and what they are allowed to advertise.

I imagine these issues are part of why disclosure is a bit opaque right now but I can understand why.

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Something I don’t get about in-game image ads or billboards is this: even if a player sees it and wants to play the game on the billboard, the game is new and has no players so even if you search the exact title, it will not appear, as I have seen with the first game I made and as SwitchedDreams has said.

Overall, I am guessing that these billboard/image advertisements in-game are for major brands like Sega and many others who have enough money to not even bother buying advertisements from smaller games or bigger games that do have a big enough user base for image ads that they show up in search, unlike other games which are filtered out because they are assumed to be a game with no gameplay which Roblox does not want to show up in search, and, so, are meant for the biggest, most popular games and are not meant for new games trying to find a player base.

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I would like to see more technology ads like Apple ads on the immersive ads the most.

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