This is a dilemma that I’ve been wondering about for quite some time,
Which is more effective? For the last few years, I’ve just been sponsoring my games for obscene amounts of robux, which used to yield more players for me than ads.
However, sponsoring hasn’t been doing as well as used to for me, and I’ve thought about going back to using ads.
Which one was more effective for you?
Depends on the advertisement, and on the game’s icon.
Sponsoring games usually gets higher impressions, so if you have an icon that gets a lot of clicks, it can be really good.
For me, I’m generally better at making effective ads than I am at making icons so it’s better for me to do ads.
Personal preference really, either can work.
I have found that while sponsoring gives me far more impressions than ads, my CTR on ads is nearly 4x higher so my clicks per robuck spent is much higher.
Of course advertising only works for desktop and quite a number of people play on Xbox and mobile platforms, so you have to consider this in your goals.
Who is your target audience? Cause ads are only for pc users, and people can use adblockers (which still count as an ad run.)
Advertisements were 100% the way to go, when they were featured on the main games page but now it really depends how good your ads really are, same with your game icon for sponsors. So you should run what works to get you the most players for your amount of robux, for your particular audience.
I might just do ads on desktop, and then sponsor on every other platform.
@CheOsana
Even with ads getting a higher CTR, I still usually got more people from sponsorships, even with a low CTR, until recently.
@Minstrix
What are your suggestions for effective icons/ads?
Just a note — you shouldn’t sponsor right now. The sponsors I was running randomly stopped working because of roblox server issue.
Well, I’m not really a GFX guy.
Bright colours are usually good.
It really depends, if you have a catchy name & Icon, then people are very likely to click on sponsors, however, NEVER buy sponsors in high amounts (probably 1k max), however it does vary, if you’re adveritising a GROUP then ads work better usually because users get a better idea of what it is, however, if you have a good detailed game, you could also use ads.
There is not a recommended price with ads in my opinion, but the good stuff starts at 4k due to:
Friends joining.
Recommended (after a few days)
and of course, youtubers.
Hope this helped, reply for any questions! 
Yikes, I used to drop 45k R$ on sponsorships at one point - though I did almost, if not double, my money those times.
@Minstrix
What else do you feature in your GFX besides bright colors?
@Lawnmovver
When did this issue start? And does Roblox have an ETA on when it will cede?
I haven’t tracked it exactly, but for the past two days or so an orange warning label has been intermittently showing up on Roblox’s main website “We are encountering issues…” something along those lines.
For about a few hours my sponsors simply stopped getting more impressions. After the issue was over, they started working again but since they just didn’t work for a good 5-10 hours (wasn’t too actively checking, but definitely at least 5) I barely got my money back.
So this is a case for why you shouldn’t put all your money in sponsors at once — spread it out. Because Roblox could have issues and then you’re screwed.
Should I do multiple sponsorships? I used to create two, three sponsorships for a single game on a single device and spread it out that way - I don’t know if that was effective or not.
I’ve utilized ads before with sponsors but they just didn’t do as well - I think my ads were just bad, especially since they were clickbaity ones from 2014/2015
It depends on the type of game, the icon, etc.
From what I’ve heard:
Sponsors can reach a much larger audience than ads (especially mobile)
People who click on sponsors are often not as rich as people who click on ads (don’t have data on this, just heard many people who experimented a lot on both say this)
Ah ok. I was trying to get feedback and determine if I should do solely one or the other or do a mix, with sponsorships focused on non-desktop users.
What type of game is it? From what I’ve heard, RPG/Simulators should go with sponsors almost exclusively. (A guy from limitless RPG told me something like 30k sponsors per day were good for launching.)
However, ads have their own value. Let’s say I made a code that gave you something in game. I could put it on an ad and people who want free stuff might be more inclined to click on it.
There’s actually no real benefit from sponsoring them same thing multiple times. If I sponsored on desktop for 500, then did it again for 500, it would be the same as doing it once for 1000. The amount of impressions is pretty much directly related to the amount you spend so you won’t get much by splitting them.
Another thing is ad/sponsor fatigue. At large amounts ads/sponsors simply become less effective. So changing it up is always good.
It’s a war game type thing, similar to my Two Player Military Tycoon game(s)