I think a lot of people are over thinking this, yes the gender/age will miss out on the outliers however it will give the developer more reach for less money, therefore increasing the games chance of success, therefore increasing the chance that those outliers will infact find the game.
A lot of people are thinking this is how every game will be sorted, its really just sponsors and sponsors aren’t the end goal, they are about getting your game off the ground and/or expanding its playerbase so this is a absolutely amazing update for that.
still though, roblox is just going to be reinforcing gender stereotypes that a lot of people hope we could begin to stray away from… just because other businesses do it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. like other people have said already, it would be nice if we could just get ads targeted through interests rather than gender.
I agree all the way. I want to use my robux to its potential for ads and using this new feature for sponsored ads gets you a little closer to your target audience or majority of people that play your game that has similar interests.
I understand wanting to maximize the profit, but this is a common stereotype. Boys play with cars, but cars are too difficult for girls to understand, etc. This new update gives room for people to make and reinforce harmful stereotypes. I get that other big companies may do it as well, however, we’ve made do without gender targeting so far on Roblox, why do we have to start now?
It really isn’t. We aren’t stereotyping, we’re looking at simple statistics. I assure you, if you looked into the MAIN demographic of people who play “Royale High” - It’d probably be Girls aged 9-13 or something. It is the same as a cars company sponsoring a TV Show about cars - People who watch the car show are more likely to buy the car product, than if they were to sponsor a show about Makeup and Beauty.
If I am throwing my money into a huge gamble (Advertising is always a gamble, you can profit, you might not) I want to REDUCE the risk of losing profit, and INCREASE my permanent playerbase. Yes, Men aged 18+ might play Royale High once after seeing the advert, but they probably won’t return to the game on a regular basis, whereas the main demographic of Females aged 9-13 (for example), WOULD return on a regular basis.
Furthermore, It’s a known fact that boys like cars much more than girls. Nobody here is saying that “No girls like cars” - We’re just saying MORE Boys like cars than girls, if you don’t believe me then I urge you to go to your local gokarting track or racing track and you can do the statistical research there yourself.
It’s advertising101, it’s really simple stuff. Know your target audience, and reach out to them. Youtube does the same, TV advertisers do the same. It isn’t stereotyping, it’s using demographical statistics to make an educated assumption on who will most likely want to play your game.
I absolutley agree with your opinion. Some people get mad at things like this revolving around gender streyotypes when there is real world statistics and I can’t help but laugh at them.
This is really big for developers. Thank you. I like how you are making advertising on Roblox like it is with real advertising. Might I suggest a system where you can set a MAX amount of robux per day, and each click will take away from that max robux, and you can pause campaigns (like Google Ads)
Gender targeting would work since roblox has been collecting gender data for years. Since the gender feature has just been removed, you still have years of data to use in your targeting.
For people who accuse people using this as “enforcing steryotypes” . They exist for a reason, just like a Canadian saying “eh” drinking maple syrup, we have data to back up that some Canadians may actually drink maple syrup.
At risk of sounding spoiled, we have no access to this feature despite having a released game with good playercount/engagement stats, while A game that is a stolen copy of Animal Simulator has access with alternate accounts.
AMAZING! I sponsored my game Zulu Wars to over 10k people. I think I got around 15 clicks. I love the age and gender changes! I wanted to show my game to preteen and teen boys, since that’s who plays those musket warfare games. Amazing update.
I dont get your point. Your saying when somebody has a baby boy they should buy them girl toys and boy toys? No. Boys generally enjoy playing with dinosaurs while girls play with dolls more. Why should we encourage boys who like playing fps games and such to play dress up dancing games? If a boy wants boy stuff theres no reason to force girl stuff to them.
Edit: this is what the servers of royale high look like
I see around 3 boys in there. So why should devs waste spending robux on ads for royale high for all genders when they can do female only and get more players simply because 13 yr old males are most likely going to ignore the ad
Thank you for all the hard work you’ve put into this update!
However, I will not be using sponsors from this point on, and I would recommend against other developers using them, as the value for money of sponsors has been massively reduced ever since Roblox stopped showing sponsored games in the first 4 sorts (meaning you have to scroll down an entire page worth of sorts to see any sort of sponsored ad).
This decreases the number of sponsors that can be fit on a page, lowering impressions and also essentially hiding them from any users not making a positive action to scroll through the bottom categories. There is a feature request to fix this particular incongruity (I’m assuming it’s an oversight considering sponsored ads just received a massive update, and the idea isn’t to kill them off) which I hope is addressed.
Something isn’t a stereotype if it’s statistically true. Is it wrong for a boy to like “feminine” things or the other way around? No, but that doesn’t change the fact that they are still statistical outliers, it’s just how it is, because it hasn’t been very long since an era where people were raised under certain roles.
There is some controversy on the gender part, but the purpose is girls would likely be targeted with ads that are more for girls (like royale high), and boys would likely be targeted with ads more for boys (like Jailbreak). Of course, there is no problem if a girl likes Jailbreak or if a boy likes Royal high, its just statistics.
