Edit: Apparently you can’t select none. I’m assuming selecting all would run the ads for all players, including those with no gender data, since otherwise they’d never receive ads (which sounds awesome), so my point about selecting all still stands.
First off, I definitely agree that your interests are not determined by your gender. That being said, I don’t believe targeted advertising enforces stereotypes.
Here’s an example:
Say someone knows I’m a furry. If they come up to me and say, “Hey, want to go watch Zootopia?” They’re not enforcing anything, they’re just catering/pandering to me, and that’s what advertising is. if targeted advertising enforces gender stereotypes, then all advertising enforces all stereotypes and the topic becomes a moot point since it’s all one big game of manipulation.
I’ve said my piece on the matter, and TBH the forums are not the best place for political discussion, so I’m gonna sign off. I hope you at least understand where I’m coming from.
Are there any plans to reimburse users for site downtime when they run ads/sponsors? I’ve seen many others complain about the issue and now with the updated system, it’s a good time to talk about it.
My opinion on this was stated well by @M_caw before but in case it wasn’t clear:
Please do not let people target based on gender. It’s not an important statistic and is liable to hurt people long-term, either through profiling or through other more obscure means.
This is an incredible upgrade and I’m excited to see it come to fruition. I believe these ad filters will add to the earning potential of ads. The extra metrics are going to be very insightful as well and help me calculate cost per play easily. I can also A/B test and not bloat up my dashboard.
Thanks a ton for the ability to drill down to different demographics. This is incredibly impactful and closer to industry standards.
Being able to target demographics means developers will be able to get more traffic per dollar spent on ads which will particularly help more niche games and smaller devs find footing.
Somehow Instagram exclusively advertises mobile RPGs to me, because it knows I love RPGs. It would be fantastic if the Roblox system expanded to be like this in the future so we can advertise our games to players who are into the same genre!
This is the first time an advertising/sponsoring system update has been released by Roblox in years, I want to give everybody involved a big THANK YOU. Sponsoring allows countless developers a chance to earn a living on Roblox, to do the good in the world they want to do. More statistics is always better. I think everyone posting about gender and stereotypes should backup their claims with science. Data and the scientific method allow countless leaps and bounds in human discovery, and with more data going developers’ way, the science of how to earn a living on Roblox game development will get more sound, benefiting current and future devs alike. I can also imagine added statistics for different genres of games based similarly to how the recommended for you sort works.
I will also be able to update my tutorial with new information once I get access!
That is SUCH a ridiculous claim and anyone who has a lot of experience with the economics of games and playerbases knows as such. Take a game like Royale High. The creators of that game without a doubt know that the primary audience, in other words the audience of players who will enjoy the game most, are young girls. That’s not to say that boys aren’t allowed to play Royale High, of course they can. But, statistically, the most prominent demographic in that game tends to be girls.
This type of information is extremely valuable for creators who know their target audience and want to reach out to the most receptive of players as effectively as possible. Sure, it “enforces gender stereotypes”, but really it’s the inverse: certain gender-based preferences for games exist, for whatever reasons you want to attribute, and developers want to take advantage of this. It’s sorta like a chicken and egg situation: do boys want to play X so developers of X games target boys, or do developers of X games target boys and thus boys develop a preference for X? I would argue it is the former.
Again, I want to stress these are statistical facts, not some decision some evil overlord has made which states “you are a girl, so you MUST play X. muahahahahaha”. STATISTICALLY, X is more likely to happen than Y. This also means that maybe 70% of girls like a certain thing, which of course means that 30% of girls don’t like said thing. But, if you advertise to all girls for that thing, 70% would be favorable to your product, meaning you have a statistical advantage. It’s math.
Completely agreed. This kind of information is wonderful. Having ads analyze a player’s game preferences in the way the recommended sort does, to better target ad viewing, would be super awesome, maybe as a simple toggle.
I hope they continue in this direction. Some ideas for additional statistics might be:
Region (country): maybe you have a UK royal guard roleplay game and you want to advertise to UK players because of that (kinda corny but who knows, could be useful)
Language: maybe your game is localized in Spanish and you think Spanish speaking players enjoy your type of game more than English speakers, so you run ads to Spanish speakers (that would depend on whether there is a language setting on roblox, I believe there is?)
I shouldn’t be surprised to hear “profiling children is okay because society is already doing it” but somehow I’m still disappointed.
Roblox devs continue to choose profits over morality. Just because you can make use of a statistic to gain advantages doesn’t mean you should. Roblox should not even have this data, let alone allow people to use it. It is an unethical nightmare that inherently excludes nonbinary folx and closeted trans people, to say nothing of the gender roles it helps enforce.
Everyone of every background views the same front page. There is no boys game sort or girls game sort. Sponsored ads take up a very very insignificant portion of the front page and are almost invisible to the end user. These statistical tools are there to aid developers and I cannot see how this additional support would harm the end user.
And by the way, I don’t want to get too political about this, but the assertion that of anything, this harms “closeted trans people” is ridiculous. If you want to see sponsored ads that have been targeted to users who have selected the “boys” option in their setting, then change your setting to “boys”. Nobody can publicly see what your gender selection is, it’s not like developers have the ability to read the gender setting of any user in game. This is completely anonymous.
It isn’t anonymous to the user, who for any number of reasons might not have their gender match the one they actually are. Helicopter parents, people overseeing the screen, they forgot to change it (the gender setting is h*cking invisible), take your pick.
I don’t know how to convince you that only showing girls “girl” games and only showing boys “boy” games will harm both groups, but you’re welcome to research it yourself; gender roles are harmful, and reinforcing them does harm.
That’s a good point you brought up. If they add more gender options such as “Other” or “Prefer not to say” like Google, this ad personalization may have potential, and can be powerful if used correctly. If they don’t add those options, then its best to make the gender personalization an OPTION, which it probably is.
@General
That reminds me: age targetting–scam games can easily aim for young audiences to fool them. IDK how perfect the ad/sponsor moderation is, but what I’ve heard recently, it’s not great. How are scam sponsored games gonna be handled especially with the powerful age targeting?
I think you are lacking nuance when you claim that developers will “only show” certain games to girls or “only show” certain games to boys. In 90% of games, the statistical difference in the prevalence of boys versus girls in game is negligible. But, in the other 10% of games, their audiences are highly focused for whatever reason to either girls or boys. If 90% of the players in your game are boys, then is it really ridiculous to want to run ads to boys only?
Assume the distribution of boys and girls on roblox is perfectly 50/50, and your game’s demographic skews 90% boys. One way to analyze this 90% boys statistic in the context of the 50/50 even distribution is the following statement: boys are 9x more likely to enjoy your game than girls (90 boys, 10 girls, the number of boys and girls on the platform are even, and both genders have been exposed to the game evenly. 90/10 = 9x)
Now, let’s say we run a sponsor not targeted to either gender, and we get 1000 impressions. 500 girls and 500 boys. Let’s also say that among the boys, there is a 10% conversion ratio, meaning of the 500 boys who saw the sponsor, 50 boys play and enjoy the game. Now, recalling our statement that boys are 9x more likely to enjoy the game than girls, we can roughly figure out the conversion ratio for girls. 10% * (1/9) = 1.11% . Apply this to our group of 500 girls, this means we picked up 5.55 girl fans (round to 6). Out of our 1000 impressions, we got 50 boys and 6 girls. 56 total fans.
Now, we run another sponsor ad, this time targeting only boys. Like last time, we again get 1000 impressions. 1000 boys * 10% conversion ratio = 100 boys, or 100 total fans.
Now let’s compare our two ad runs and see which was more effective. In the non-targeted ad, we got 56 new fans. In the targeted ad, we got 100 new fans. That’s almost double the number of new fans for the same amount of impressions! We can easily see why targeting is beneficial to a developer.
“There are no traits that a boy or girl is just born with.” First of all, controversial/political opinions have NO place here, and second, please don’t refer to a dated hypothesis as objective fact. Everyone has their own beliefs on the subject, and it isn’t your place to make up their minds for them.
