Not trying to stir anyone up or anything, but I keep seeing discussion around Roblox’s decision to allow developers to target ads towards certain genders and I don’t see the issue. This is not something new, this is something virtually every platform uses. Google, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, all of these platforms allow you to make an advertisement directed towards a certain gender and there is a good reason for it. Using gender as an analytic is incredibly useful for getting advertisements to the people it’s suppose to get to. If a game like Royal High wanted to push out an advertisement about one of their new updates to their mostly female audience, this feature would not only help the developers of the game, but the players themselves that didn’t know there was an update. And nowhere in this cycle is there any gender stereotypes being pushed. However I do think Roblox should allow users to choose more options for their gender when signing up, or not disclose that information entirely.
Please fix sponsors. I believe sponsors became worse after the “Games” page got changed (correct me if I am wrong). The reason is because sponsors only appear in a couple of sections in the “Games” page. The sections which it appears are at the bottom of the “Games” page. For example, Most Engage section is at the top of the “games” page, but they do not show sponsors. The Popular section (which shows sponsors) got moved down. People usually look at the top sections of the “games” page. Advertisements are now way better than sponsors.
I know someone who put 150k Robux on sponsors and got max 250 concurrent players (with a decent icon). The game then went to around only 20 players after a day. Then after a couple of days he put 20k onto advertisements (with a decent ad) and got over 400 concurrent players. The players still remained after a day.
I do believe having a Target Audience feature is wonderful. I thought this was amazing when it was introduced but the main concern we have is that when you Sponsor 5k targeted towards 13> you get more Impressions than you would if you were to target <13. This shouldn’t be the case, it should give the same amount of impressions either way even if there is less people… It could just show multiple times for the same person? This is just my opinion on the situation.
For the love of god PLEASE fix the sponsor categories. This is literally the worst possible thing you could do to the development community. You have DESTROYED game discovery with this update. I was planning to release my game over 2 weeks ago but due to this we can’t do anything!
I know you guys in developer relations and the engineers are reading our posts, so why aren’t you saying anything? This is horrible! If you’re implementing a fix, or at least trying to find a solution then please notify us, be transparent! People are still losing tons of money due to your shitty system. 
Can anyone give an update on the impression rate being so low? Has this been resolved or addressed? I’ve avoided sponsoring my games without knowing that I’m not going to totally waste all my robux to receive half the impressions I usually would.
The sponsoring system has turned into an inefficient money pit for developers for at least month now. In most cases we earn less money than we spend due to catastrophically low CTR. Even with a well monetized & decently made game.
There are still a ton of developers who don’t have the new Sponsor system (myself included). It’s been several weeks and I am still stuck with the ol’ dated system of having no customization of my sponsoring. Can this be rolled out faster please?
And now we need an absurd amount of money to get any exposure. 100k Robux will barely get us 300+ players now.
My game, Tower Defenders, used to hit 2.4k concurrent players with sponsors during a time where I had;
- Less content
- Horrible monetization
- Buggy & awful gameplay
- Lower ratings
- Very high crash rates
- Hideous UI
And now my game has become a polished flagship of quality and hard work. Ratings are higher, monetization is better, more content, less bugs, better gameplay. People love the game more than they used to.
And now I can barely scratch 600 concurrent players with sponsoring.
My new sponsorship stats post-updates
My old sponsorship stats pre-update to the game page
I have seen countless posts of complaint and despair that this obviously broken system has been getting lackluster attention and isn’t being fixed. Many developers in this ann. post alone are getting quite literally scammed out of hundreds to thousands of dollars because of outages / bugging out, or how inefficient the new system is.
The game page has now become once again, You get to the top, you stay at the top. Currently, game discoverability is abysmal compared to what it used to be a few months ago.
Just a few replies in this ann. post alone found just by skimming for 30s
Now here’s a handful of posts I found quickly researching how people feel about the current state of sponsoring & game discoverability
Here’s one, and another, and another, and another, and another, and another… and on and on it goes.
I love Roblox, and I love being able to make people happy with my games. And to be able to support a living using this awesome platform I grew up on…
But something is very wrong here. We need a fix and we need it fast.
I feel like having an options is better than having no options, I mean I sometime think I agree there should be no gender-targeting. But because I think that way, should everyone else be like me and I should take away their options. I would rather not. We should allow to let people choose.
This feature is now available to all developers. As a reminder, you will have access to the old sponsored ads reporting until at least December 31, 2020.
Alright so the old sponsor method is back therefore there wont be any issue with not having any impressions correct?
Please. Listen to us. I know I sound like a broken record here, and personally I don’t care how annoying I have to be. Please consider readding sponsors into all of the front page sorts. Or, at the very least, have a sense of transparency with us and explain to us why you won’t? We aren’t unreasonable people, please treat us as such.
Will targeted advertisements expand to banner and skyscraper ads? Perhaps also include the option to target based on genre interests in the future.
I really think it would be useful to add a “run again” like the old system had where you could take out funds and then run the sponsor again manually for 10,000R$ for example. But currently I have to make a new sponsored ad for everytime I am going to sponsor.
I don’t take out funds like 200,000R$ to spend on 20 days because I do it manually and I know a lot of people do aswell. Please add this feature so we can re-run completed sponsors.
To any fools that think that this update is inherently sexist, ask yourself one thing. Would it be a smart business decision to advertise a salon game to all audiences? No. I doubt more than 1 boy average would click it if you advertised your aesthetic group or salon group to 5k people. Would women join your military group? Statistics save money.
Whether you want to admit it or not, the reality is that generally male and female audiences are attracted to different types of games. This also isn’t restricting any gender from playing certain games, all it means is that they’ll see ads that statistically they’ll be more likely to play. Removing stereotypes is good and all but quite frankly genders do exist and much of the time they do have a say in what we do and enjoy, including the games we play. I also understand your point that profits shouldn’t be prioritized over morals but this system will likely make it more easily for individuals to find games that they’ll enjoy, so its a kind of win-win scenario. As for the smaller group that may not like many of the games their being advertised based off their gender, as I said earlier they can choose to play whatever they want and this isn’t really limiting them in any way. Everyone should feel comfortable on the Roblox platform but shouldn’t changes be made to make the largest possible amount of people happy (as long as the effect won’t be too negative for those who do not fit into this group.)
Not sure if I’m just very dumb or this is bugged for me…
"Start date must not be a future date" bug error???
I’ve looked everywhere and don’t know why this is happening or how to fix it.
Perhaps I overlooked something, please correct me. But I see no place to change what date it starts…
As I was writing this reply, it ended up working after I got that error message many times. I spam clicked it and it finally went through.
Edit: As I attempt to test Mobile & Console sponsoring. It still appears to give me the error. Spam clicking isn’t working.
Personally, the gender part is a great addition for me. When I want to advertise my barbie house tycoon game, I would kinda prefer if it was shown to female audiences.
I even looked at my games players, almost all of them are female.
Its not sexist, its just advertising.
Having this issue as well. I’m hoping someone will look into this.
I spent 20k on ads in a game prior to this update, and I got 100 concurrent players out of it. I run 30k now and only get 12 concurrent players. Amazing scam roblox, you did it again.
The old system was an inconvenient mess that threw sponsored ads at anyone randomly. Now, developers can target demographics for maximum reach and clicks. IMO, nothing was bad about this update. Please be specific about your opinion.
Did you ever get a campaign out of this ad run?
I had the old ad system at the time (within a few days of your ad run) and I know that my runs went through. Was there a glitch with showing the new sponsors before everyone had them?
I’m not staff so I can’t refund you, but did they ever help you out if this campaign never ran for you?