Roblox is advertising the new ads manager with the message “Switch to the new Ads Manager with custom thumbnails, fast setup, and results-driven reporting, powered by AI.”:
This is killing small developers. We can’t afford to pay 30x more for worse results. The “Powered by AI” buzzword doesn’t matter if the campaigns don’t work as much.
I just hope the classic ads manager wont be sunset, because I will for sure not pay x30 more for the same results.
I’m reporting this as a bug as a hope that this isn’t intentional, please fix it Roblox staff
~ note: I used the same game for both ads, same platform and region filtering, ran at the same time!, this isnt a one time thing, it happened to me multiple times, thats why i dont use the new ads manager anymore.
The new system charges for more than just plays, that’s why the cost goes up compared to the classic system. I think clicks also go into that cost calculation now. Also, the new system will make sure to use up the budget you setup, which means it can sometimes end up spending $0.10 or $0.15 per play. Part of the reason why I don’t use the new system, it’s not flexible enough and spends way too much money. Using the classic mode, you can control exactly how much is spent and often much cheaper per play. Just my opinion, it’s been talked about on here many times since the new ad system launch.
I have no idea how roblox is just casually letting this flawed system work, from what I’ve seen in various devforum posts, it’s extremely inconsistent between users (possibly even on the old one?), and even if it is supposedly working well, these costs aren’t instilling much confidence into me
I recently ran another test, and the results are still far worse than with the old system. I really hope Roblox will fix this or at least avoid disabling the old ad manager…
because if performance stays this bad, I’ll have to stop running ads… it’s simply not worth it!
hey @sombolian — really appreciate you flagging this and laying out the details so clearly.
I took a look at your campaign, and it looks like the targeting settings were extremely narrow. When the audience becomes very small, the system has fewer people to reach, which can drive up costs and reduce performance. If your goal is performance, I recommend trying broader targeting and letting the ML/AI system optimize delivery. But if you have a strict business need to reach a very specific audience, that’s when narrow targeting makes sense — it just comes with those trade-offs.
I’m going to DM you so we can go through your setup together and make sure everything is working as expected. We’ll walk through it step-by-step and get you unblocked.
My results are not as bad as the original post, and I haven’t used the old Ad system at all, but he was getting 22,900 impressions/$ with the old system, and when I used the new system just now, I’m getting 4800 or close to 1/5th the impressions/$ using fully broad targeting. Not as bad as the original post makes it sound, but still a large discrepancy.
I wouldn’t mind having poor CPP as much if I could attribute it to bad thumbnails, or a bad description or something, but when I see other peoples’ impressions significantly higher and I have no control over how many impressions I get, it feels unfair.
And then looking at the benchmarks, it actively tells me I should be getting over 7x the CPP that I’m getting, but the benchmarks don’t tell me anything about average impressions or average clicks so it leaves me to infer that the problem could be anywhere in the chain without helping me to identify where I’m getting wrong in my poor CPP.
With the sunset of the classic system, I too am encountering this issue. Is there any way/equivalent system to choose bidding prices in the new manager? I am seeing significantly higher prices for a lower amount of players with my current campaigns than those with the classic manager. Even the simple option to lower my bidding price would be a great addition.
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this needs fixing ASAP
