Roblox

Anthropic’s AI-operated vending machine sparks chaos; ad revenue should remain a top priority; and Roblox has potential for in-game ads – and concerns.

The metaverse hype is over; Apple Maps forays into advertising; and streamers vie for HBO Max and the WBD studio archive.

WPP aims to turn around faster; YouTube TV tips the carriage deal market; and Roblox takes its time on video ads.

Google can’t stop catching fines in Europe; Roblox game developers might finally get a cut of a revenue; and eBay is getting into the AI game.

Google’s search antitrust trial ends with a whimper; the pitfalls of agency-owned SSPs; Perplexity axes its ads business; and brands are still building big-ticket metaverse experiences.

As premium game prices skyrocket and paid subscriptions and cloud-based gaming services take off, marketers sense a chance to defray rising costs with ad revenue – perhaps dispelling some doubts about the value of more ads in games.

Ever since 2020, TV upfront rates have declined; inconsistent metrics mean inaccurate results; plus, Roblox is touting its strong hold on its viewers’ (er, gamers’) attention.

While advertisers’ interest in gaming may be growing, their spending commitments seem stuck on pause, judging by Tuesday’s IAB PlayFronts event.

Roblox is making major additions to its still-nascent ad offering, including new integrations to make its ad formats available through Google Ad Manager.

The in-game advertising market’s stagnation is both unsurprising and frustrating. The onus is on the gaming industry to make gaming an essential channel for advertisers, rather than a nice-to-have.

Move over, Mr. Met — it’s Grimace’s time to shine. Plus, Zeta Global has acquired email marketing and identity company LiveIntent for $250 million.

In today’s newsletter: How loosened ad restrictions helped snacks take over America; Brazil’s X ban dings stan culture; and Roblox partners with Shopify as it expands real-world ecommerce to all creators.

Pharmacies, groceries and even convenience stores have taken to locking up large swathes of merchandise. Plus, Roblox reported Q2 earnings on Thursday.

Roblox CEO David Baszucki said advertising “will not be material this year” during the company’s Q1 earnings call on Thursday.

In today’s newsletter: Online news revenue is being throttled around the web; Roblox is on a mission to build a $1 billion ad business; and TikTok is circumventing the Apple App Store’s 30% fee by directing users off iOS to purchase TikTok coins.

Roblox’s head of immersive media Ashley McCollum explains how the online gaming giant built its ad platform with demand for programmatic video in mind. And she previews Roblox’s ambitions to grow an ecommerce platform for real-world purchases.

In today’s newsletter: Data broker Adstra sues IPG-owned Acxiom and Kinesso; Apple could strip the P address of its status as a useful identity signal; and Roblox will introduce video ads later this year, with SSP PubMatic as its programmatic vendor.

SuperAwesome CEO Kate O’Loughlin discusses how contextual targeting makes it less risky for brands to market to kids and teens, and whether advertiser priorities for reaching young consumers are shifting after years of metaverse hype.

The vast majority of advertisers who buy ads in video games (91%) no longer consider gaming to be an experimental media channel. But ad spend in games still lags behind audience engagement.

In today’s newsletter: Uber, the New York Times and Roblox all have ads businesses, but in different flavors; Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery plan to launch a sports streaming service; and Amazon gets introspective in response to competition from Temu, Shein and TikTok.

Given the deprecation of third-party cookies and the reemergence of contextual targeting, 2024 could be a big year for in-game ads – so long as game publishers position themselves as a source of premium inventory.

The online gaming platform announced a slate of new features for its Immersive Ads hub at its investor day on Wednesday, including video functionality and contextual and age-based targeting available on a self-serve basis.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Long-Tail Retail Walmart Connect and Target Roundel are the two retail media players with the biggest adoption outside of Amazon, according to a recent Digiday survey. But both lag far behind Amazon’s 76% adoption rate. Twenty-four percent of those surveyed used Walmart Connect’s […]

Skip4, a new gaming-focused ad agency led by women who proudly wear the “gamer” label, is leaning in to grow the channel’s share of media budgets.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Apple’s Bite Apple will now let paid subscription apps (think The Economist or meditation app Calm) offer audio content exclusively for their subscribers, a trendy tactic in Podcast Land. Spotify has a similar idea, but it partners with the subscription service Patreon. And […]

With 43% of Roblox’s users under 13 and about 70% 18 and under, Roblox must pay attention to legislation and policy around advertising to children. But it would be a total head-scratcher for Roblox to pivot its ad business to focus on over-18 audiences.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Google Gripe Google is refunding agencies for “billing discrepancies,” aka ads that ran in places where they weren’t supposed to, Ad Age reports. The refunds (which Google refers to as credits) closely follow the viral Adalytics report alleging that YouTube placed TrueView ad […]

Though some early media coverage of the program suggested participants will get greater access to Roblox-provided data, that’s not actually the case. But partners will get a direct line to Roblox personnel for support.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Follow Your Intuition, I Guess Intuit, which owns Mailchimp and accounting software like TurboTax and QuickBooks, is launching an ad network called SMB MediaLabs, Adweek reports. As the name implies, Intuit’s media business is a “small business-focused media network.” But it’s focused on […]

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Upfront At The Upfront NBCUniversal’s upfront was quite the affair. Executives had to enter Radio City Music Hall through a side door because the entrance was blocked by Writers Guild of America protesters. (Guess Netflix was onto something.) Once everyone was settled, the […]