{"id":618893,"date":"2023-03-17T09:48:43","date_gmt":"2023-03-17T14:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.sellorbuyhomefast.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/17\/how-roblox-hopes-to-assuage-consumer-advocates-safety-concerns-with-its-new-ad-standards\/"},"modified":"2023-03-17T09:48:43","modified_gmt":"2023-03-17T14:48:43","slug":"how-roblox-hopes-to-assuage-consumer-advocates-safety-concerns-with-its-new-ad-standards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2023\/03\/17\/how-roblox-hopes-to-assuage-consumer-advocates-safety-concerns-with-its-new-ad-standards\/","title":{"rendered":"How Roblox hopes to assuage consumer advocates\u2019 safety concerns with its new ad standards"},"content":{"rendered":"
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March 16, 2023\u00a0\u00a0\u2022\u00a0\u00a07 min read<\/span> \u00a0\u2022\u00a0 By Alexander Lee<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Editor\u2019s note: An earlier headline for this article implied that the explicit purpose of Roblox\u2019s new ad standards was to address consumer advocates\u2019 safety concerns. While the new updates do address some of the advocates\u2019 concerns, the purpose of the new standards was simply to create transparency and consistency among Roblox served ads and independent ads. We have therefore amended the headline and adjusted the lede to make this clear.<\/em><\/p>\n

On Wednesday, Roblox announced a slate of new ad standards and policy changes, the latest update on its plans to enter the online advertising market in 2023<\/a>. The goal of the new standards is to increase transparency around Roblox\u2019s ad offerings \u2014 which could help assuage consumer advocates\u2019 concerns about child safety on the metaverse platform.<\/p>\n

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Roblox\u2019s player base has traditionally been dominated by users aged 13 or less, but Roblox chief business officer Craig Donato told Digiday that advertisers\u2019 coveted 17-24 age bracket is the platform\u2019s fastest-growing demographic group. At last year\u2019s Roblox Developers Conference, CEO and founder Dave Baszucki told attendees that over half of Roblox users are 13 or older<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re starting to see content that\u2019s really targeting the 17-plus audience,\u201d Donato said.<\/p>\n

Despite these demographic shifts, Roblox remains wildly popular<\/a> among children in the United States. The growing presence of brands on the platform has sparked concerns<\/a> among some consumer advocates, who worry that children might not be able to easily parse the difference between unbranded Roblox experiences and so-called \u201cadvergames<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yesterday\u2019s updates directly addressed some of these concerns. Moving forward, Roblox is implementing a new advertising API to ensure that neither Roblox-served ads nor developers\u2019 independent ads will be shown to users under 13 years old. All Roblox developers will have to explicitly disclose when one of their experiences is a paid-for advertisement, although they will ultimately be allowed to make the call themselves regarding whether or not their content is an ad.<\/p>\n

To learn more about the strategy behind Roblox\u2019s new ad standards, Digiday contacted Roblox\u2019s Donato for the following annotated Q&A.<\/p>\n

This conversation has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Donato:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brands need to think about how they establish a presence in this world, to engage with consumers. I remember when the web came about, and brands were like, \u201cwe need a website\u201d \u2014\u00a0and that was kind of a crazy thing, right? And then social media came about, and brands suddenly said, \u201coh, we need to have a presence on Instagram and Facebook.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

I think we\u2019re in this moment where, in January, we had 5 billion hours of usage, predominantly among younger folks, people spending two and a half hours a day plus on our platform \u2014 and I think brands are trying to figure out what is the appropriate way to engage consumers on Roblox. It\u2019s a tremendous opportunity, but it\u2019s quite complicated; it\u2019s a brand-new format.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Digiday:<\/strong><\/p>\n

The comparison between the rise of metaverse platforms and the rise of social media is useful, because it lets marketers without gaming experience wrap their minds around why and how they might want to get their brand involved in Roblox. But not all Roblox creators prefer to speak of the platform in these terms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Matthew Warneford, the CEO of the Roblox development studio Dubit<\/a>, believes a comparison to television advertising is more apt \u2014\u00a0and still supports the idea that brands shouldn\u2019t be ignoring Roblox. \u201cEvery brand of a certain scale will advertise on TV; they don\u2019t try and build their own entertainment content, necessarily,\u201d he said. \u201cThey just go where the audience is. As we see brands get smarter, they\u2019ll realize that not all brands need to have their own award-winning destination.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

On the presence of unlicensed branded content in Roblox<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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Donato: <\/strong><\/p>\n

This is always something we\u2019re very sensitive to, because we run a giant creator economy, so honoring the rights of creators to own their IP is obviously incredibly important to us. So we respond very quickly to DMCA takedown requests, and there\u2019s all sorts of things we do on the search side. This is something we absolutely take very seriously, and I think we\u2019ve always been incredibly responsive to it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What we find in some instances, though, is that some brands don\u2019t want to necessarily report it. Sometimes it\u2019s like fan media, where the community is taking their IP and doing all those things. It\u2019s ultimately the brands\u2019 call, and it probably depends on how it\u2019s being used in all these situations.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Digiday:<\/strong><\/p>\n

So far, brands have reacted in vastly different ways to the unlicensed use of their products and logos in Roblox experiences. At the height of the popularity of \u201cSquid Game,\u201d Netflix made no effort to crack down on the multitude of show-inspired experiences<\/a> that cropped up on the platform; on the other hand, the Roblox experience \u201cDriving Empire<\/a>\u201d has implemented and removed recreations of real car brands\u2019 vehicles over the past year as players have complained about their unlicensed use.<\/p>\n

As Roblox rolls out its new ad standards, brands could warm up to such unlicensed use of their products. Unlicensed brand experiences aren\u2019t paid-for ads, meaning they won\u2019t have to be disclosed as such under Roblox\u2019s new policies.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Donato<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

We produced a policy at least six months ago, maybe a year ago, that said you can\u2019t do third-party ad serving. If you\u2019re going to put content in your experience, you need to stand behind it; you can\u2019t have someone else dynamically serve it. It needs to go through our moderation flows, and the data needs to stay on-platform. So with this, we\u2019re just reiterating that.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Digiday:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Roblox\u2019s decision to crack down on third-party advertising networks is a blow to the in-game advertising industry, which already struggles from its lack of premium inventory<\/a>. As properties like Roblox and Fortnite transform from games into metaverse platforms, they are taking more direct control over their ad inventory, further reducing the amount of game experiences available as inventory for the pre-existing networks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

On the word \u201cadvergame\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Donato:<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t like that word, because it assumes that, just because a brand is associated with it, it\u2019s advertising. This is the distinction we want to draw. Again, brands are producing TikToks, they\u2019re producing YouTube, they are producing pictures on Instagram. That content is usually just organic content; sometimes it can be considered advertising. We want to be super clear, it\u2019s [an ad] if they\u2019re directly promoting and selling a product or service.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Digiday:<\/strong><\/p>\n

While there is clearly a difference between a branded Roblox experience such as Vans World<\/a> and billboards inside Roblox, both are ultimately trying to build affinity with a brand \u2014 and get Roblox users to spend more money on its products, whether or not there is an ad directly promoting a product or service. Roblox\u2019s new standards will almost certainly lead to increased\u00a0 ad transparency on the platform, but time will tell whether the changes satisfy the consumer advocates who have previously expressed concerns.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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