One of the most common requests that we’ve heard from our developers is to improve Sponsored Games so developers can more easily get their games discovered. Today we are excited to announce significant improvements to Sponsored Games on Roblox.
Here is an overview of the new features:
A redesigned ad creation flow to make creating ads easier; we’ve also added a ”Sponsor” button next to your game on the Creations page to make creating ads discoverable
Gender and basic age targeting
The ability to run ads for up to 28 days
Improved sponsored games reporting that shows detailed stats about the performance of your ads
And the most exciting feature: attributed game play stats as a result of your ad
We are gradually rolling out the new Sponsored Games over the coming weeks, so if you aren’t able to access it today, you will be soon.
To find the new Sponsored Games, go to your Creations and click on the Sponsor button next to one of your games. Even with new Sponsored Games access, you will still be able to find your old Sponsored Games results for the next few months. We will deprecate reporting for the old sponsored ads system on or after 12/31/2020.
- Auggadoodle
FAQs:
I don’t have access to the new Sponsored Games. How can I request access?
As with many new features, Roblox is testing the new Sponsored Games before launching the feature to all of our users. Please be patient as we work towards giving 100% of our developers access to the new Sponsored Games. Unfortunately, we cannot manually opt you in.
I used to update bids on days when I wanted my Sponsored Games ads to run. How do I create new ads in the new Sponsored Games system?
You can create a new ad and schedule that ad to run for as long as 28 days. You no longer need to set a bid for every day that you want the ad to run.
I used to see estimated impressions for my bid. Why don’t I see this any more?
Because this is a new ad system, we must collect impressions and bids before making these estimates. We plan to make average bids and estimated impressions available once we have enough data to make these estimates.
How do I find my old Sponsored Games reports?
Go to your list of Sponsored Game Ads and click on the link “View old sponsored game ads” link in the top right hand corner. NOTE: This feature will be deprecated beginning the week of Jan 13th
How do you measure attributed game plays?
Roblox reports on game plays that are attributed to your ads. We follow the standard industry convention of a 1 day view, 28 day click through attribution window. And we limit just one game play per ad. In other words, if you run an ad and the person who clicks on your ad plays that game every day, we will record at most one game play per ad for that user.
What happens when I set an ad that is scheduled to run for more than one day, but I stop the ad before the schedule completes?
When you run an ad, Roblox debits the Robux from your account for the scheduled duration of the ad. If you happen to stop the ad before the schedule completes, Roblox will provide a refund for every complete day that the ad did not run. For example, if you set an ad to run for 3 days and you click stop on the first day, you will receive a refund for the remaining two days when the ad did not run.
The new Sponsored Games features are now live for all developers:
At long last, the advertising system gets some love! Are there any plans to support shorter runs (e.g. 1 hour) for people who are interested in just getting an initial burst of players, or for people who want to run a quick open beta test for their game? That’s one of my biggest use cases for the advertising system as a whole.
I would be happy… if not for the blatant gender stereoyping.
This update would be great if not for this option. The gender selection previously had no purpose other than statistics- but the fact that developers can access this has serious issues. As fellow developers put it:
The option to target genders will enforce stereotypes, is an outdated statistic, and will place users in two black-and-white categories. There are no such things as a male or female targeted game.
Furthermore, because of the lack of a non-binary gender choice, enby users will feel incredibly awkward having to see ads “just for boys” or “just for girls.”
Well it’s true… developers can now target ads based on genders. Hooray.
I hate to see Roblox take three steps forward but one step back. You’re just limiting your platform.
(All quotes from this topic that I created addressing the issue.)
To all of you saying gender is a good statistic… gender shouldn’t be a statistic.
Why are you prioritizing profits over morals? Obviously amoral actions shouldn’t take precedent over making sure everyone is comfortable.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! THIS IS AMAZING! These are definitely some of the most requested features.
Now for a few questions (I’m super excited):
Will these enhancements (eventually) be applied to the user ad system?
Will there be language targeting for localized ads/icons?
How does running ads for long periods of time work? Do you automatically pay the lump sum at the beginning, or does it just automatically renew each day?
Can we also now run shorter ad cycles for less than 24 hours?
Because this is a new ad system, we must collect impressions and bids before making these estimates. We plan to make average bids and estimated impressions available once we have enough data to make these estimates.
Does this mean that we will be getting more accurate estimates? From what I understood the old system just displayed the impressions from the day before.
Roblox reports on game plays that are attributed to your ads. We follow the standard industry convention of a 1 day view, 28 day click through attribution window. And we limit just one game play per ad.
Is this only for when a player has clicked on the ad immediately beforehand, or, for example if they click on the ad, go to another page, then come back and play the game?
Does this mean we’ll be able to select which age and gender the ads/sponsors will show up to? If yes, nice feature & big thanks to the people who updated this system!
It’s also pretty awesome you can get a partial refund now. I’ve always wanted this feature and now it exists
For users that have now opted out of selecting a gender for their account, what ads will be displayed to them? If I haven’t selected a gender, will I get ads that are targeted to both male and female people or none at all?
@LexiDog5@xXMonkeyGiraffeXx@M_caw There is still value in gender-based ad targeting. This is how every system works. I’m also under the assumption you can opt out of this and do a “non-specific” option.
My Example:
If I make a game about fairies, and I know my money will bring in 10x the female audience where as it will bring in a fraction of the males (because of the design of the game), then I am going to target the female audiences.
This is not to say that males or non-binary audiences wouldn’t like the game. I’d just rather focus my efforts. Higher bang for buck.
I’m a professional Digital Marketing Analyzer and account manager for Google Ads accounts (for decently sized accounts of about a total of a million USD ad spend a year)
Gender targeting and age targeting is a step forward in better optimizing for conversions and lowering wasted spend.
The amount of spoofing isn’t as high as some people would think. You will save money and get better returns thanks to this new level of targeting. This is real marketing, personal opinions on gender and whatever nonsense probably doesn’t belong here.
Age targeting? That wont work well as many people fake their ages to bypass things like tags. For example if you make a game like Adopt Me and you set it for say 8 years old, but all the 8 year olds choose 18 to be able to say numbers without being tagged then they wouldn’t be seeing the ad?
Regarding gender targeting: the real question is, why not use it? It’s a data point Roblox already has for most people, and the fact of the matter is that there are types of games that tend to be played more by one gender than the other. Ideally we’d be able to select with incredible granularity which kinds of people we want to show the ad to based on what they like, but we can’t. Until that day comes, gender is a fine solution that makes advertising robux better spent, because at the end of the day, I wouldn’t market a princess roleplay game to a +13 male.
Including these options is about maximizing ad clicks based on the data Roblox has. That’s really all there is to it, and removing them would be a huge waste.
@M_caw, what stereotyping is going on here? Roblox is simply letting us choose which of a user-submitted data point we’d like to advertise to. You’re more than welcome to advertise your game to whoever you want to. There are real statistics that prove certain genders are more interested in games with certain themes and mechanics, and regardless of how that comes to be, the point stands that from an advertising perspective, money should be spent targeting consumers who are statistically more likely to consume the product.
The next step roblox should consider in my opinion is to enable games to be placed in more reasonable “categories” so that advertisers can advertise to people depending on which category of games they like.
For example, if the player likes royal high and crown academy, and they like roleplay games, if the advertisers want to advertise their own roleplay game, they can set their ads so that it appears to users who generally play roleplay games.
To anyone demoting gender targeting or struggling to understand it:
Gender targeting is a great step into real world marketing. For example: you have a doll game. If this is advertised to boys, do you think they will want to play it? Most likely not. You have another WWII fighting game. Boys are more likely to play this. The success of an ad all depends on your target audience.
What I would like to know is if they’re going to make a “cap” on the number of Robux you can bid, because I know a lot of developers that constantly get outbid on sponsors and ads because they simply don’t have the financial means to put in 10,000 Robux each weekend into sponsors or advertisements if there’s no guarantee they’ll make that Robux back or get more concurrent player base members.
Really happy to see this as it gives a more modern approach to marketing, I always felt limited with the few options that developers had before. Although gender is useful to market towards, I feel like we should also be able to see statics on our game based on gender as it will give us better insights on what to market to, kind of like what we currently have for age.
