Roblox attracts interest from WPP despite accusations of online harms
Last week, WPP announced it was partnering Roblox with the goal of scaling expertise in the gaming platform among its agency teams and brands to better “leverage Roblox as a new media channel”.
The partnership will include “Roblox sprint days” to educate agency leaders and brands on the platform, as well as the creation of a joint advisory council to “advance 3D measurement”.
Both WPP and its media investment arm GroupM are set to join Roblox’s Partner Program to help establish a “measurement advisory relationship”. The agency holding company will also work with Roblox to develop a multi-module certification programme to incentivise marketers to improve their expertise in the platform, available to both creative and media agencies.
Analysis: Drive to reach Gen Z
Nina Mackie, co-founder and chief revenue officer at gaming consultancy WeGame2, previously told The Media Leader that media agencies have been increasingly seeking greater access to Roblox’s ad inventory as they look to embrace platforms popular among Generations Z and Alpha.
Reacting to WPP’s partnership, Mackie said it signifies confidence in growing client demand for gamified brand experiences, writing on LinkedIn that WPP is “predicting investment levels towards branded content, gamified experiences, [and] immersive media will grow heavily and this will help WPP have a competitive edge on other agencies when pitching”.
She added that “genuine 3D measurement standards are long overdue” in order to maximise investment and that the partnership is likely to encourage more brands to consider Roblox’s programmatic ad inventory in particular.
Gaming has for many years been considered a key media channel to reach younger audiences, but it has often remained on smaller innovation budgets in media plans due to concerns around measurement standards, effectiveness and a lack of institutional knowledge on how to create engaging gamified creative work.
In the meantime, however, as PHD Manchester gaming business directory Tess Gullis pointed out at The Future of Media Manchester last month, failing to centre gaming on media plans has fallen behind trends in consumer habits.
“If you’re to look at the amount of time Gen Z spends online — we invest millions into TikTok, but actually they’re spending more time on places like Roblox,” Gullis said. “When we look at our media plans, this isn’t being reflected in the investment.”
Advertisers have been increasing their investments in Roblox in recent quarters as the company has released a number of new tools — including for programmatic buyers — to promote ad buying. To do so, The Media Leader previously reported that Roblox has begun taking control over the informal ad ecosystem that had sprung up around the platform in recent years, with the goal of creating a walled garden.
Roblox began offering programmatic inventory in partnership with supply-side platform PubMatic in April. In May, it made in-game video ads available to all advertisers through its self-serve Ads Manager, further hinting at the potential later this year to purchase the inventory through additional programmatic media partners.
Accordingly, gaming insights platform GEEIQ found that new brand activations on Roblox grew 85% in H1 2024 compared with H1 2023 and that 45% of new brand activations across all gaming platforms in the first half of this year occurred on Roblox.
Will ‘paedophile hellscape’ accusations weigh on brands?
Despite growth in Roblox’s ad business, the gaming company remains dogged by concerns around child safety on its platform.
Indeed, on the same day that WPP announced its partnership with Roblox, a new report from activist short-selling group Hindenburg Research accused Roblox of creating “a paedophile hellscape for kids” and of over-inflating its user metrics.
Hindenburg’s research estimated that Roblox was inflating both the number of users on its platforms by 25-42% and engagement hours by over 100%.
It also argued that Roblox is “compromising child safety in order to report growth to investors” and is “exposing children to grooming, pornography, violent content and extremely abusive speech” due to a lack of care and investment in safety and moderation.
Hindenburg said it had registered an under-13 account on the platform to test whether children could be exposed to adult content.
“By merely plugging ‘adult’ into the Roblox search bar, we found a group called Adult Studios with 3,334 members openly trading child pornography and soliciting sexual acts from minors,” the report said. “We tracked some of the members of Adult Studios and easily found 38 Roblox groups — one with 103,000 members — openly soliciting sexual favours and trading child pornography. The chatrooms trading in child pornography had no age restrictions.”
According to the report, while researchers were registered as a child, they were able to access games like Escape to Epstein Island (in reference to convicted sex offender and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein) and Diddy Party (in reference to the rapper and alleged sex trafficker).
Roblox moves to create a walled garden as it leans into ad strategy
The report caused Roblox’s share price to drop as much as 9% during the day, although by the next day the price had stabilised at its pre-report level. Shares of Roblox are down 3.7% year to date.
In a statement, Roblox called Hindenburg’s financial claims “misleading” and accused the company of “hav[ing] an agenda irrespective of the substance of Roblox’s business model and results”.
With respect to online safety, a spokesperson for Roblox said: “Safety and civility have been foundational to Roblox since the company’s inception nearly two decades ago and the company has invested heavily throughout its history in its trust and safety efforts.
“Every day, tens of millions of users of all ages have safe and positive experiences on Roblox, abiding by the company’s community standards. Roblox takes any content or behaviour on the platform that doesn’t abide by its standards extremely seriously and Roblox has a robust set of proactive and preventative safety measures designed to catch and prevent malicious or harmful activity on the platform.”
Hard to police
As the Hindenburg report itself noted, the concerns that it raised regarding online safety are not new, but rather have received widespread coverage over the past few years. For example, a 2022 report found “Nazi sex parties” occurring on the platform.
Max Bleyleben, former chief privacy officer and managing director of youth marketing tech provider SuperAwesome, previously told The Media Leader that the scale of Roblox’s platform makes fully policing safety measures “impossible”. However, he believed the company “does as much — if not more — than anyone”, including social media companies that have faced similar criticisms.
At The Future of Media London last week, Bauer Media’s commercial chief Simon Kilby warned that the media industry was “at risk” of eroding its legacy “by funding platforms that are increasingly linked with growing mental health crises”, expressing concerns that advertisers are complicit in funding digital companies committing harm against children.
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