Roblox also rewards children and young people for consuming adverts
Many people block out adverts or ignore them. The gaming platform Roblox, which is mainly used by children and young people, has announced a different approach: users are rewarded for viewing adverts.
The gaming platform Roblox is attracting attention with a controversial new advertising model. Anyone who views adverts within Roblox games will receive in-game items as a reward. Roblox announced this on 1 April in a press release. However, this is not an April Fool's joke. A large proportion of users are children and young people. If you don't have children and don't know Roblox, you can find out more below.
How does the new form of reward advertising work?
Basically, Roblox is announcing the "rewarded ad videos" format along with a new Google partnership. The partnership should ensure that the new adverts can be placed more easily and quickly. It should also make it easier to expand the immersive adverts.
Source: Roblox
The incentive to watch the many new adverts is the rewards that users receive for doing so. If they watch the up to 30-second adverts in full screen, they will receive in-game rewards for the game they are playing. Initial tests have shown that participating users watch more than 80 per cent of the total running time of the advertising videos.
Roblox states that through immersive advertising, advertisers can easily reach their "key target group, including the tens of millions of daily active Gen-Z users". Roblox also provides figures on this: more than 61 per cent of daily active users, or around 50 million users, are over 13 years old and "eligible to view ads". Conversely, this means that 39 per cent are under the age of 13. Roblox is officially authorised for users aged 12 and over.
Just a few days ago, the EU announced new guidelines to combat manipulative practices that encourage minors in particular to spend money. You can read the article by my colleague Florian here:
What is Roblox?
Roblox describes itself as an "immersive platform" where "millions of people come together every day to play, create and interact". It is an ecosystem that offers games (so-called experiences), a marketplace and social media functions.
At the end of 2024, it was estimated that around 380 million users were active on Roblox every month. By comparison, the largest gaming platform Steam "only" attracts around 40 million monthly users, according to SteamDB. Fortnite has 110 million fans per month.
Many of the games available on Roblox were developed by private individuals: You can create your own games using Roblox Studio and make them available to others. According to the Roblox website, 2.8 million developers are active on the platform, many of whom are minors. Roblox is repeatedly criticised for exploiting young developers. The accusation is that minors create content with which the platform earns money. It is also not easy to have the money earned paid out in real currency.
If a game achieves a certain level of popularity, Roblox offers the developers monetisation options and earns money from this.
A gigantic platform for gigantic profits
Monetisation is an important keyword: Roblox generated revenue of 3.6 billion US dollars in 2024. The focus is on the in-game currency "Robux". It serves as a means of payment for a wide range of services in the Roblox ecosystem. You buy Robux with real money. There is also a paid premium subscription, which also grants you Robux and other benefits. The US company Roblox Corporation keeps 30 per cent of all transactions in the Roblox ecosystem for itself.
Advertising is also playing an increasingly important role. "Immersive advertising" has been available since 2023. By this, Roblox means adverts that are displayed within the games, for example on billboards on the virtual street.
Header image: Shutterstock/Jennie Book
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Feels just as comfortable in front of a gaming PC as she does in a hammock in the garden. Likes the Roman Empire, container ships and science fiction books. Focuses mostly on unearthing news stories about IT and smart products.
