If You Build it On Roblox, Will They Come?
If You Build it On Roblox, Will They Come?
As more brands and IP owners activate on Roblox, what best practices and learnings can you leverage to increase your odds of success?
The landscape for brands and IP owners on Roblox has changed over the last few years as more and more brands enter the platform. This has manifested both from platform changes instituted by Roblox but also how brands, IP owners and developers measure success. As more and more brands look at ways to activate on the platform, is the famous adage of “if you build it, they will come” applicable?
In our view, the answer is no, brands have to work harder than ever to stand out on the platform, engage authentically with digital natives and continue to push the boundaries in order to standout. Below is a list of a few key learnings for brands and IP owners. Though it’s by no means exhaustive, we’d be happy to chat with you about specific questions or items of concern.
Platform Changes
The Roblox platform is constantly evolving and brands and IP owners that are activating on the platform need to stay up to date on the latest changes to continuously fine-tune their strategies and successfully and efficiently reach the 78 million and growing daily active users of the platform. Although the below examples are by no means an exhaustive list of platform changes over the last few years, they help to shine a light on how changes influence go-to-market strategies for brands.
A major change that occurred in 2023 was the opening up of limited UGC to a larger set of creators. Prior to this change, the creation of limited UGC was gated to brands and other select partners of Roblox. This meant that brands stood out by offering free limited UGC when others could not, making this a very effective user acquisition tool. After the platform change, it was still an effective tool, but less so than it was when limited UGC was restricted.
Another platform change occurred more recently, also affecting limited UGC. Roblox increased the minting fee for limited UGC and also increased certain deposits needed to create paid limited assets on the platform, making it more costly to leverage limited UGC as a user acquisition and monetization tool. The minting fee - the per item cost of creating limited UGC - increased roughly 4x while paid limited publishing advances also increased substantially, varying by asset type.
This is all to say that activating on Roblox is not a static experience for brands and IP owners. The landscape is constantly evolving, presenting new challenges and new opportunities. This increases the onus on brands and IP owners to find the right partners with platform-native experience and nous to help guide them on their journey on the platform to best take advantage of all of the ways to reach this captive audience.
Investing in User Acquisition
It may seem strange, especially to many coming to Roblox from a traditional marketing background, but you have to “market the marketing” on Roblox. That is to say on Roblox, you need to spend to let users know you’re there and attract them to your experience, which in gaming is known as user acquisition spending.
User acquisition can take many forms including purchasing sponsored ads on the Roblox discovery feed, leveraging portal ads to effectively purchase traffic into your experience or leveraging giveaways of free limited UGC to attract users. At Supersocial, we work with our partners to develop a holistic go-to-market strategy, which includes user acquisition, but “marketing the marketing” remains an important aspect of successful Roblox experiences.
Games vs. Bare Worlds
One trend that has stood out to us is the difference in engagement between games that have core loops and those that are just hangout worlds with no required game mechanics. We define a core loop as a set of tasks that are required to complete in order to engage with the experience, rather than minigames that are optional, which would not qualify.
We evaluated many of the largest branded games that are based around hubs or expansive worlds and differentiated between those that have core loops and those that don’t. And as the data below shows, those that have core loops see significantly better engagement metrics. For brands and IP owners, this means that you need to build not just worlds for Robloxians to immerse themselves in your brand, but enticing games to keep them coming back.
Our analysis of these games shows that:
Brand world experiences with a core loop drove 135% higher average daily visits than those without a core loop
Those with a core loop generated 46% higher average daily playtime than the world’s without a core loop
439% higher average concurrent users for worlds with a core loop vs. those without
217% higher peak CCU for experiences with a core loop vs. those without
For brands and IP owners, this means that you need to not just think about building a world that espouses the values and ethos of the brand or IP, but on building even just a simple required game mechanic that keeps users engaged in a way that is familiar to other experiences on the platform.
Evolving Definitions of Success
A last key change we are seeing on the platform is a shift in how brands and IP owners define success from Roblox activations. Some of the earliest brands to activate on the platform first measured success in terms of metrics centered around reach and awareness, like total visits to an experience, unique users accessing that experience and the number of impressions the experience generates.
But as brands become more seasoned on the platform and look to do more than just raise brand awareness, we saw measures of success evolving to still include reach and awareness but also incorporate metrics of engagement, such as average daily active users, average daily play sessions per user and average session length or average daily playtime.
And now, with the upcoming release of Roblox’s real-world commerce solution and additional third-party capabilities, we are seeing brands and IP owners increasingly focused on adding goals centered around turning their experience into a value-generating business asset. This includes monetizing virtually on the Roblox platform, acquiring new customers via loyalty program sign-ups and as mentioned, selling real-world goods.
Where to Go Next
The changing dynamics of the Roblox platform, platform-native experience needed to be successful with Roblox activations and evolving measures of success mean that brands and IP owners need to choose the right partner to be successful in their Roblox strategies. At Supersocial, we have generated over 150 million visits, engaging over 35 million unique users and generating over 800 million impressions on the Roblox platform. We’ve worked with fantastic partners including Gucci, Walmart, Universal Music Group, NARS Cosmetics, e.l.f. Cosmetics, Warner Bros. and Fairview Portals.
Get in touch with us today to chat about Supersocial can help you on your Roblox journey.