Roblox Sponsored ads go into a STOPPED state by themselves
Steps to reproduce
Run a sponsored ad
Go to sleep
Check the ad when you wake up
Notice it says the ad is STOPPED
Observed behavior
The ad was set to a STOPPED status by the system, before it completed. There are 9 cases of ads going to STOPPED state in my account lately. It seems to happen to most but not all of the Sponsored Ads that I run. I ran some A/B tests with 2 ads against different targets that ran at the same time and those seem to always get stopped. I am not notified when this happens, I have to notice it myself by checking in on the ads.
Expected behavior
Expect the ad to run for the amount of time that I paid for. Expect that if the system stops my ads, there should be a reason and I should be notified. Expect that my experience should not be targeted for traffic reduction by Roblox corp.
Others raised this issue and it was marked as closed but it is definitely not closed in my case:
My experience Slither Simulator has other problems with being “shadow banned” periodically which may or may not be related:
These 2 behaviors combined add up to a developer experience that Roblox Corporation is trying to shut down my game. My ads are shut down and my game is removed from Discovery periodically without warning, without notice, and without compensation. I want to know why just as much as I want this to be fixed.
This happened again today. The issue is serious, and ongoing, and I have reported it for several weeks. I would like this issue to receive a High Priority fix ASAP. Thank you in advance for escalating it to the proper resources at Roblox for investigation today.
Screen shot of ad I ran this morning which stopped itself:
I had another ad stopped today. It ran for about 11 hours this time before the system stopped it. I have to continually check in on my ads, which is strenuous.
Do we know if this is potentially related to moderation? Is my experience perchance being flagged by bots each day?
@Focia19 Can you please advise, whether it is ok to continue trying to advertise on Roblox? I have resubmitted a number of times, and when the ads are running, the do seem to be generating extra traffic. But if they are causing problems, especially with regards to incorrect balance in my Robux account, I will stop re-submitting them until I receive confirmation this has been addressed.
I was unable to advertise on Roblox this past weekend because my ads are always stopped. I can see that my overall traffic is declining because I’m not able to properly advertise and I keep getting shadow banned.
17 days have passed since I first reported this problem of stopped ads to #Bug-Support. @Focia19 I am writing to request the status of this High Severity issue. When can I expect a resolution? Now we are entering the holiday season and it is imperative that I be able to advertise my experience. Please update this thread today with a progress report from Roblox engineering.
It may be the case that a small number of experiences are impacted, but that does not mean this should be a low priority issue to fix.
Is this issue related to the use of emoji in my experience description? Is this related to the Turkish translation that was recently added to my experience? Is my experience being flagged by bots? Is this related to a certain segment that I’m targeting with my ads? Why, Roblox, Why?
Being a low priority issue is not the case here! But, because of the small number of experiences affected, we had a hard time finding the root cause of the issue!
However, there was much time spent internally from my side and the engineers for this issue, and we have a lead now, the engineers are working on fixing the bug currently.
I ran 2 test ads the last 2 days, both were stopped. It’s a holiday weekend and I am prohibited from advertising. This is costing Roblox sales of Sponsored Ads. And it is definitely costing me in terms of not being able to get that extra surge of holiday traffic.
More info, I analyzed my sponsored ad history and I ran 57 successful ads before October 11 when the first ad was stopped. Since then I have attempted 34 ad campaigns and 30 of those were stopped. My last successful ad was Nov 6 and since then the system has stopped 21 ads.
I have an ongoing test ad for 50 robux per day for 7 days that I keep in my account. Usually the system stops it after a few hours. My theory is if this starts to succeed, I will have some way to know when it is safe to use the broken system again.
I hope there is not some corrupted data or something causing my Roblox account to not act normally. If this is an act of moderation I have not been notified, and I double checked my Spam folder to be sure.
It started happening pretty regularly around Oct 11, which does not coincide with when my experience was translated to Turkish language, which was Oct 24.
/cc @Focia19 please pass this info on to the engineer, and I would appreciate a swift resolution, thanks as always for your help with this important matter.
Happened twice on the same experience for me, was looking at how sponsorships would work for different audiences and both just stopped. Experience: 11468486100
I ran 2 other sponsors over the weekend and both were fine, however they also were both 1 day sponsors.
I ran a 5 day sponsor and it got stopped, I have no idea how long it lasted before it got stopped.
