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- [00:05]
A
Welcome to the Big Story, a roundtable featuring members of the Ad Exchanger editorial team. Every week we bring you an in depth discussion of key developments in digital marketing and media. This episode is sponsored by basis, the leading intelligent operating system for autonomous advertising. Its enterprise AI solution transforms campaign briefs into strategies and media plans that integrate directly into omnichannel activation. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a platform seeking to possess good fortune must be in want of advertising. That's my take on where Jane Austen crashes into advertising. Shout out to everyone who recognized that Pride and Prejudice reference. Now let me tell you why. Just like the dashing romances on the moors, it can feel absolutely inevitable that every gorgeous, delightful platform attracting eyeballs will eventually be married with advertising and eventually have even more advertising. And that's the theme for today's episode. First off, those home screen ads you see when you turn on your TV have long been prized possessions for TV operating systems. Usually that inventory is only available directly. But now those home screen ads are going programmatic. We are going to see more advertisers on those TV home screens. And our associate editor Victoria McNally is going to tell us how Samsung is going about this, why and what other home screens are opening up to new advertisers. Then the gaming platform popular with grade schoolers. Rather, Roblox is going to be expanding where it shows ads to include kids under the age of 13. Those ads will not be targeted because of COPPA, the law that protects kids from online targeted advertising when they are under the age of 13, but not ads overall, as all of us who grew up on Polly Pocket and Tony the Tiger and Keebler the Elf ads can attest. So our senior editor Anthony Vargas will share how Roblox is going about this change. And I know in my mind I'm like imagining like the Keebler Tony Roblox mashup in my head. Is it going to look like that? We're going to find out what these two companies have in common. TV home screen ads. Roblox is that they don't want to mess up the ad experience. They still want to show relevant, appropriate ads. And they have their own playback playbook as to how they will accomplish that. So before we dive into this great exciting episode, I can't wait to discuss this topic on Exchanger will be diving into the Mediterranean in a couple of weeks. I'm moderating a panel Monday of Cannes on the Equative Yacht about publishers and how they're monetizing and the age of AI. Can't wait to see some of you on the quas. And Fast forwarding to September 28th and 29th, we're gathering the tech focus to future forward. Folks who are figuring out this new wave of technology and how it will shape advertising, you're going to want to be part of this conversation. So grab your ticket to Programmatic IO in New York City and our listeners can add the code POD10 for a little something that's 10% off your ticket. So now let's dive into this topic. We're going to talk about programmatic home screen ads first. Victoria They've been around for years. I think we're all familiar with this ad format. But why are they only just now being activated programmatically?
- [03:54]
B
Good question. Just to start, the reason we're talking about this is because Samsung, the day that we're recording Wednesday, announced a big push into programmatic home screen ads on their OS devices. They're going to be available through the trade desk and through Google DV360 to start. They're not the first companies to do it. There's a couple other that have experimented with it before. I know Nexon has done a couple of partnerships with TVOS providers. There's also Titanos, which I believe is in Spain. It's one of those European ones that we never hear about over here. So it's been around. I would say it's kind of similar to where pause ads were a couple years ago, where each new iteration of somebody going programmatic with it was really novel and now it's kind of a little more ubiquitous. But the reason it's taken so long is because the home screen is really valuable for TVOS providers because it's literally the first thing you see when you boot up the screen and it behooves them to make it not annoying for you to do that, which is number one, you know, you can't have ads that are too flashy or too outside of something that might disrupt the user experience. When I talked to Samsung's team, they sort of were saying like family friendly elements is also a big concern. Like you don't want the first ad somebody sees to be a sports gambling ad or a political ad or something they're going to have a strong opinion about. On top of that, it's also the most engaged that a TV watcher is going to be in the moment because they've literally just turned on the tv. They're deciding what to watch, they're clicking around. They may be more likely to click on a thing as they're seeing it. So a lot of companies have been really precious with that inventory. They want to make sure that they are getting the most bang for their buck that they can, that they're working with the top brands to secure those spots, which is why it's been mostly direct. And then on top of that, you have the same problem that every single programmatic thing has, which is just technical specs and standardization and making sure that everybody has the right stuff that they're sending in to be programmatically bidded on in the first place. It was funny. Samsung, it was Yousef Ben Yousef, who's head of their ads business development team, I believe was his title. He was saying the IB is currently working on a lot of standardization for these CTD specific ads, including home screen ads. But they kind of just didn't want to wait for the IB to come up with standard kind of stuff for them. So they just went ahead and, you know, went for it.
- [06:30]
A
Oh, okay.
- [06:31]
B
That was kind of their thinking.
- [06:33]
A
So we're having programmatic home screen ads. There's now a number of companies that are doing this and there's. There's going to be more guardrails, which I will say as, as a parent, I, I appreciate that our TV has started like autoplaying random channels. I haven't figured out what's going on. And then sometimes it's like weird stuff that my kids are like reacting to and I'm like, we gotta change the ch. I don't know why. It's like going on the buzzfeed fast channel or like a dark news story anyway, so. But that's different than the ad experience. I would add to that that I feel like a lot of home screens when they started were really focused on one vertical, like the tune in ads, as in ads for other programs you might want to watch or apps to download. So it's interesting to see it expand to what I can only assume is like a broader advertising base. Because it does make sense that you're kind of in this discovery mode. Like when you turn on the tv, maybe you actually have something specific you're planning to watch, but maybe you just turned on the TV and you're poking around.
- [07:44]
B
Yeah, our Roku device is convinced that all I want to do is watch China beach, which is a show I had never heard of until a YouTuber I like has made the same joke about her TV in one of her videos. So maybe it's. I just watched that video too many times. And now it's like you also want to watch China beach, of course, I
- [08:04]
A
have never heard of that show, but now I'm going to. It looks like mash, but it's got
- [08:10]
B
a lady in it, and she's on the ad lady. That's all I know.
- [08:14]
A
So you see a lot of China beach. So. And I feel like that's also speaking to the programmaticness of this. All right. Like how specific our tastes are or interests or what products we want to buy. So let's talk about what could go wrong. What could go wrong. We talked about kind of guardrails from an advertiser point of view. But, you know, sometimes after these platforms marry up with advertising, it can. It can be not great. I think I heard the word of the year is insidification. If I can swear on the podcast,
- [08:52]
B
I hope you can. I'm sure I've done it before, too.
- [08:56]
A
So let's talk about that. Let's lay the cards on the table. I think that's something everyone's aware of, judging even from your conversation about the launch.
- [09:09]
B
Yeah, I will say that is a recurring thing that we hear people have concerns about writ large. Maybe not necessarily just in ad tech, of if you're introducing ads in an environment where there weren't ads before, are people going to get weird about it? And I know that that concern has been raised with regard to stuff like Netflix, where there wasn't ads and then there was. But I would argue that people are still, to this day, kind of used to seeing regular commercial breaks in their tv, even if they went through a long period of time where they weren't seeing them that frequently because of subscribe stuff that they were subscribing to. But it's very different when you have like, for example, not to harp on Samsung, but like a smart fridge that starts showing you ads because there weren't ads there before and you don't expect there to be ads on your fridge. So with the home screen ad, I don't know where that necessarily falls because, yeah, people are used to seeing ads on TV and they're used to seeing stuff in those spaces right now already. Like, there are ads there obviously. Um, but it might start to be more jarring if it's less China beach and like, less, you know, the fast channel you were just watching the day before and more like toothpaste ads or like car ads, you know, like, it might start to feel different. And I'm. I'm sort of not sure when that line becomes a problem. Presumably these companies are aware of when that's going to happen and are kind of thinking about that. But even still, like, you know, Samsung's team talked about having, you know, AI powered systems for filtering out like obscene content or stuff. That's not the right technical specs. But I don't know what frequency capping is going to look like for these types of ads either. So that's something to consider as well.
- [10:55]
C
And I think like, you know, like, I'll just offer kind of like the consumer perspective here because I didn't, I didn't cover the story. So I'm kind of like looking at this as just like a TV watcher. My concern here is like, you know, the, the, the scope creep of this potentially, you know, like if it starts off as just kind of like innocuous like display ads or like maybe just like some clickable things like, you know, that's kind of whatever, that's sort of what people are already used to seeing on their home screens. But if it becomes like a lot of like, you know, like moving video, that's like auto playing and stuff like that, then it's like, all right, what are we doing here? And like, possibly like worst case scenario, if it becomes like one of, one of my favorite, like, you know, I've been doing this series of like normies posting about advertising on LinkedIn. One of my favorite normies posting about advertising posts that I've ever seen. I might use it for Today's edition is YouTube, like posted. YouTube's like Twitter account posted like this thing that was like, you know, you just got home from work, you're sitting down for dinner. What's the first thing you're watching? You turn on your YouTube app. What's the first thing you're watching? And someone responded to unskippable ads. So like if that becomes the experience every time I turn on my tv, where I got to sit through some ads before I can even start like going through and selecting what content I want to watch. Like that I would be very, very
- [12:12]
B
worried about piggybacking off of that. Speaking of my Roku tv, they started doing this thing with the. I don't think I actually downloaded the Howdy app. Howdy is their SVOD thing that they started over last summer. And I think it's like $3 and it's a bunch of movies. And of course they have ads for it, that kind of thing. I think they force downloaded the app itself onto everybody's devices, which like, okay, fine, it's Roku, I get it, it's your thing, whatever. But a couple months ago, I noticed when I was scrolling through apps that the Howdy app, once you get near it starts to wiggle, like, ooh, look at me. And it was so annoying to me that it would do that. And so, yeah, to your point, like, if that functionality becomes a thing that's more commonplace, maybe not necessarily for programmatic ads, but, like, that could be the. If you're trying to get a direct spot in that same placement, like, maybe that's the sweetening. Like, ooh, it'll be more interactive. Like, that's gonna get really annoying really fast.
- [13:12]
A
Yeah. I mean, if we're talking about standards, I feel like a standard on motion for me is like a very much a table stakes thing, because pause ads that move, I turn the TV off, like, and I, I ran into that a lot when I was watching the Olympics because I'd be. We were watching them a lot. I'd be pausing, like, to sit down for dinner. And I was like, I literally, like, it's just like giving Windows 95, like, I felt like it was just like bouncing against the corner, if we remember that style of screensaver and stuff. And I was like, I cannot handle this visually. It's too overwhelming for me. So please limit the motion. I love a good, like, five second of motion, but then stop the motion. Like to not have continuous motion. I, I can't handle it.
- [14:00]
B
If we're just complaining about CTV stuff too. I also want to complain about the, the thing that all the apps do now, which is start playing the thing that you're watching as you hover over it because it's so distracting. I get that they probably get people sucked in. They're like, oh, that looks interesting. I want to watch. But I'm like, I, ah, it's loud. I'm. I'm just trying to read the titles of the content. Like, please just stop, stop. Don't cut directly to an exposure scene. I know, it's exciting. I don't care.
- [14:25]
A
Well, I think they're trying and I think the purpose. When you were. Are you talking about when you're within the app yourself or when you're still within the home? Okay. Because I feel like with Netflix, some of that. Yeah, you can manually disable that. Victoria. I guess that shows how much I. At least you used to be able to. That shows how much I care about the lack of motion. That I've like gone deep into the settings when they started to autoplay, actually. Mainly because I think I watched like a 10 second clip of a horror movie that I was like, that was too far for me. Or I was like, I need.
- [14:59]
B
Now imagine it's an ad.
- [15:00]
A
I need to opt in before I see something really scary right before I go to bed or something. Anthony's like, laughing because his family, as I, as I know, is like hardcore into horror. Horror movies. That probably doesn't even.
- [15:14]
C
Yeah, but that, that being said, my wife, she's like the most susceptible person, like, on earth. Like, she's very susceptible to like, you know, anything that's like, you know, distressing or anything right before bed. So she's like, I can't watch this. Like, right before I go to bed I'm gonna have nightmares. Like that kind. And she will actually have nightmares. So it's like, you know, for those kinds of people. Definitely keep the autoplay stuff.
- [15:37]
A
Yeah, I, Yes, I could go down a rabbit hole of things I've seen at 11 o' clock at night that I don't want to see. So, yes. So many ways to be respectful. I feel like, I feel like ads actually are going to be much better than content in terms of not trying to give you horror movie vibes versus an autoplay content. But Victoria, to wrap up this segment, I think what's going to happen next, like, there's three dominoes falling. Are we going to see that home screen inventory becomes universally available and we kind of have these home screen and pause ads alongside the, you know, 6, 15, 30s, and that kind of becomes TV inventory. Like, are we going to see more of it? And I guess also, like, is it going to be valued the same way by advertisers
- [16:29]
B
as far as advertiser value?
- [16:30]
A
I'm not sure.
- [16:31]
B
I guess it will. We'll have to see how good those ads are at converting because that was a big draw for Will. Dougherty from the Trade Desk was saying to me, like, yeah, if you're buying that through Trade Desk and you're also buying your regular ad spots through Trade Desk, then it's all. Or I guess you could be more broad and say through anything. But obviously he's going to talk about the Trade Desk. It's a more unified view. You can kind of see, see how the one ad impacts the other and which one's converting versus the other and sort of have that holistic viewpoint to be able to see how well those ads are performing in the first place. Which when you're buying with like direct orders on especially these, like, novel new types of CTV ads, sometimes they're a bit more siloed out just because that's what the tech is like on the back end. But I will say both, both he and Yousef were also telling me they're not really thinking about more programmatic in terms of what the next big type of programmatic ad inventory is. They're thinking that the next frontier is going to be boosting the signals and making those more effective and then also trying to contribute to the user experience overall. For Samsung, a lot of that has to do with content discovery, trying to get people looking at the things that they're going to spend more time looking at for better or worse. I guess for some of us who get easily distracted on TVs. But you know, like to their point, I don't know, short of more programmatic availability for pause ads and for, you know, these other types of like squeezebacks. And I know Rembrandt is working on like ads that are like in scene ads, like a billboard you can put into the TV show. Again, for better or worse. And they're, they're working on making that programmatic as well. Like there's, we're hitting a point where like everything that can be traded programmatically can be. And so the, the goal will be to just make it work better, which hopefully will mean making it less overwhelming for the user. I'm hoping that's what user experience means, but you never know. To your point about it should have vacation. Sometimes it has to get really bad before these companies realize that people are frustrated and walk things back.
- [18:48]
A
So more, more inventory, more types of inventory, more available programmatically, which is a lot of opportunity for our ad tech. CTV listeners on this podcast, we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to talk about roblox. Stay with us,
- [19:09]
B
Sarah.
- [19:10]
A
I'm Sarah Sleuths, editorial director at Ad Exchanger, and I'm with Katie McAdams, the chief marketing and Commercial officer at Basis. Welcome, Katie.
- [19:19]
D
Thanks for having me.
- [19:21]
A
So Basis has found that media teams today are juggling an average of nine different platforms to run a standard digital campaign. Which makes my head spin because I know when I switch browser tabs or switch products, I'm like, wait, what was I here for again? So how does this impact their ability to be success as an advertiser?
- [19:43]
D
Sure. So it's a great question. What we find in our research is that our industry is losing anywhere from 80 to $100 billion annually in value leakage from errors, inefficiency and siloed campaigns sitting in all of those different platforms that you're talking about. And advertising is just becoming More and more fragmented, whether it's across teams, channels, tools, finance systems, and now different AI solutions. So that's a lot of context switching for one team in one day.
- [20:11]
A
Wow. So what would a connected advertising system look like as an alternative to those nine platforms?
- [20:18]
D
What we find in talking to agencies and brands is that that journey really needs to start with consolidation. And by consolidation I mean getting all of your media contracts, your campaign plans, your invoices and your client communications into one place so that you have a single source of truth. And once you have that foundation in place, then something important really starts to happen. You actually have data that is clean and reliable so that your AI can function with it more meaningfully and more predictably. So the brands and agencies that get to this state fastest are not going to be the ones who are bolting on the most AI tools. They're going to be the ones who are able to build that operational foundation first.
- [20:56]
A
I like this point that centralization isn't just about me as the media planner, but also about having more unified data that will then help me with AI, which I'm glad you brought up AI. So tell us a little bit more about how AI is being added on to this connected advertising system.
- [21:15]
D
Sure. So this is where having that solid foundation in place is going to actually help AI become more of a multiplier for your organization and your teams. As an example, Basis has Compass, which is our agentic AI planning tool. It lives right inside our platform and it solves the problem of media teams spending hours and even sometimes days synthesizing media briefs, building frameworks, building media plans, and then creating client ready presentations before campaign even launches. So Compass actually takes that brief and generates a complete omnichannel strategy across programmatic, search, social and direct in minutes instead of weeks. That strategy then becomes connected and pushed into their media plan, which can then be activated on through the basis platform across programmatic search, social and direct media buys. And what we find is that agencies and brands who are using BASIS overall are seeing 30 to 40% operational efficiency gains when they operationalize all of those workflows into one place. And that really creates an expansion of capabilities with teams being able to gain back time to focus on strategy, creativity and growth.
- [22:22]
A
So we have more efficiency through centralization, which then enables more use of AI, which is even more efficient. So really interesting to talk to you Katie and thank you to Basis for supporting our podcast.
- [22:35]
D
Thank you.
- [22:40]
A
And we are back. So Anthony, you've been covering Roblox and gaming. Overall, you're our gaming sub Beat reporter. So Roblox has had ads in market for some time now. They're going to be showing those ads to kids under age 13. So how is this different from what they've done so far?
- [23:02]
C
Yeah, so up to this point, you know, Roblox has been kind of like, steadily, like, expanding advertising across its platform since about like, 2022. They've always, like, avoided deliberately serving ads to kids under the age of 13. Like, it's always. It just like, felt like something nuclear for them as far as their strategy went, just because it would open up all kinds of, like, unanswered, like, you know, like, like all kinds of uncomfortable questions just about, like, what they're doing, what privacy protections they're putting in. And, you know, there are also, like, concerns about, like, kids on the platform more generally. So it's like, advertising has always kind of felt like, you know, maybe this is going too far. But they, they've, like, over the, since the end of last year, they've introduced a bunch of new, like, protections for, like, the under 13 audience and for kids and teens more generally. And so as a result of this, like, they now are, like, they have more like, sophisticated age verification. So, like, previously, like, if they knew a user was like, under 13, they wouldn't show them any ads. There would have. There would have been situations where maybe ads might have slipped through to, like, under 13 users in the past because they weren't verified. And, you know, like, most platforms just like, would default to, like, assuming people are over 18 if they weren't verified as under 13. But, like, now, like, that they have this, like, strict age verification in place. It's like, if you're verified as under 13 user, we're not showing you any ads. But now they're opening that audience up to advertising. And the way they say this is like, because I asked them, like, is this like, a change in strategy for you? Because it's felt like you've avoided monetizing this audience. And like, I've even talked to other people, like, you know, that are gaming adjacent and stuff that have felt like Roblox was leaving money on the table by not owning its popularity with under 13 audiences. So Roblox confirmed, like, yes, this is a change in our strategy and it was enabled by these other kinds of protections that we introduced for various different reasons. But then we realized, oh, this makes it so we can actually do under 13 advertising in a way that's compliant with regulations and stuff like that.
- [25:04]
A
Okay. And we have seen, just to take a step back from the advertising environment, we know that regulators right now are prioritizing child safety on platforms. That's part of the age verification conversation. Roadblocks, tons of lawsuits involving child safety. You know, I think there have been some urging for lawsuits involving advertising or maybe some, you know, that, that we aren't even pulling forward on this podcast. But so it feels like a dicey environment at the, from the point of view, point of view that I'm at. So why does Roblox feel like it can pull this off now?
- [25:49]
C
Yeah, so again, you know, the big thing here is like age verification. So they like, at the end of October, November last year, they introduced like this new thing that were basically like you have to, in order to verify your age, either scan your face or submit a, submit an id. And the face scanning thing uses AI to determine the person's relative age and that kind of stuff. Roblox also introduced two new user tiers for youth users. So Roblox Kids for ages 5 to 8 and Roblox select for ages 9 to 15. And these user tiers have certain restrictions built in, mainly around chat. So for instance, if you're in the Roblox Kids tier, you can only communicate through chat with other people in that tier. For Roblox select, you know, it's like they open it up a little bit like where like, you know, your parents can like let give you permission to like chat with certain other like groups and stuff like that. So like, you know, they're being more deliberate about like breaking down like the platform experience for different age groups. Now to be clear, not every user on the platform has verified their age, but the age verification has given us the most concrete data on Roblox audience makeup to date. So the most recent numbers we have on that come from the company's Q4 earnings. And as of Q4, Roblox had 144 million daily active users around the globe, 45% of whom had completed age verification. And among this group, 35% were younger than 13, 38% were between 13 and 17, and 27% were 18 or older. So just looking at those numbers, you could see why. Oh, let's, let's open up advertising for at least about a third of our audience.
- [27:34]
A
Yeah, so in a way it's a third or third or third. And then, you know, I don't know what the chicken and the egg is here, but the age verification, maybe there's many reasons that that happened beyond advertising, but then that ends up, I have an ad opportunity.
- [27:53]
C
I have plenty.
- [27:53]
B
I do find it interesting that we're not okay with ad tracking kids, but we are okay with taking giant pictures of their faces and scanning them.
- [28:05]
C
Yeah, yeah. And of course like Roblox will tell you like once the verification is complete, we get rid of all that. We're not like warehousing it all.
- [28:12]
A
Well that's like the tsa, right? They take your picture and then throw it away. But that's interesting because I remember hearing that the face was being considered for Meta and TikTok. So to know that, know that that's being used at Roblox, that was not on my radar.
- [28:29]
C
I was just going to say like when it comes to facial recognition, there's a lot of like concerns around this. Like, you know, there's like all these like early reports we're seeing about like kids being able to fool this with like fake mustaches or scanning pictures of adults or like characters within video games and stuff. So like, you know, it's not exactly a foolproof system. And you know, I think you were kind of like alluding to like, is this a proactive thing on Roblox's part or is this like related to like all these like laws that are being passed? So like Australia has a, has a law that they passed like banning users under 16 from all social media platforms. The UK is also considering like a law around that. It's unclear like if those laws are going to apply to gaming platforms like Roblox. They usually tend to be more focused on like you know, the metas, the, you know, the TikToks, the, the X's of the world, like those kinds of things. So like, you know, it's not clear if like Roblox is really like included there, but it does seem like a proactive effort on Roblox's part to be like, okay, we're doing this in like a good faith way. We want to like introduce our own kind of protections. We're self regulating ourselves. Please don't crack down on us. I don't know how effective that's going to be because like speaking as a gamer, I know like regulators haven't necessarily been like super trustful of the gaming market and they've been very susceptible to concerns around how kids are affected by gaming and advertising and things like that. So remains to be seen if that strategy works and the way Roblox expects it's going to work.
- [29:53]
A
So let's talk about how they're putting this into operation. They're working with super awesome, which is kind of a specialist in doing Doing youth marketing. So yeah, what. How are they putting this inventory into the marketplace?
- [30:11]
C
Yeah. So the big thing is there is no personalized targeting of ads for the under 13 crowd, which would violate. Do you think, do you guys prefer COPPA or Copper?
- [30:21]
A
Coppa. That's what we got.
- [30:22]
C
Yeah. Yeah, I'm never sure exactly how to pronounce that. But yeah, if they were doing targeted advertising that would violate COPPA because they're not, it's COPPA compliant. So instead the ads are going to be targeted contextually based on the experience or the game where the ad would actually be showing up. And there will also be like some like more generalized like demographic based like targeting that isn't tied to people's, you know, pii. So this could be like, you know, like the, the, the user's relative age group, their gender, their geolocation. And Roblox is also making a pool of premium inventory targetable. This is called Advertiser Select. It's basically like a curated package of like their most popular Roblox games. And then Roblox is also only allowing direct deals for the under 13 audience. They told me no programmat. The main reason is because they want to have a lot of control over what brands are actually like showing up there. Who's able to like target this pool, what the ad experience actually looks like. Roblox also isn't allowing any rewarded video ads for under 13 users. They said this basically is so that they don't seem like they're incentivizing kids to remain active on the platform for extended periods of time. And they said that like other platforms are like, you know, banning rewarded video for kids for that reason. So basically what kids, what the under 13 crowd will be seeing is only banner ads on the Roblox home screen, static and video billboard ad units inside the games themselves, but no rewarded video whatsoever. And the company also says all these ads targeted to the under 13 crowd will be clearly labeled as advertising.
- [31:55]
A
Okay, so that's a fair amount of guardrails. And then I think if I were a Roblox player, have I also, I guess even before this point been seeing like kind of some of the more immersive native ads? Like when I'm wandering around Roblox, like is that, you know, the ones that are to the community overall just the way I, you know, I don't know.
- [32:18]
C
Do you mean like the in game, like billboards or do you mean more like.
- [32:21]
A
Yeah, yeah. I'm not a Robloxer, so I'm kind of speaking, speaking yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [32:30]
C
I think like when it comes to those like in game billboards, I think like it was like what I was saying before, like if they knew that a user was like under 13, they weren't showing them those ads before. But. But now they will be, but it'll be like, you know, again, like only direct sold stuff. And you know, like also just to kind of like pick up on like, I guess, like what Super Awesome's role here is as the exclusive ad partner for the under 13 audience. They said a big part of like, what they've been focusing on is just like contextually tagging all the various different. There's tens of millions of different experiences and different games that you can play within Roblox's platform. So they're breaking all that stuff down into like contextual segments, putting in like information about like, you know, the gameplay itself. Like, is there violent gameplay here? Is it like realistic violence where like you're sniping people like Call of Duty style with like actual like guns that like look like their real life counterpart? Or is it more like fantastical violence where you're walloping people over the head with a giant lollipop or you know, something akin, more akin to like Mario stomping on Goombas, like those kinds of things. So like really like breaking all that down so that brands really know like exactly what they're getting when it comes to like when they're appearing in these different experiences.
- [33:39]
A
Okay, so we're seeing, we're seeing banner ads, not programmatic, but they are kind of going to be activated through this platform. Let's kind of close with the over under here. Like what the good part of this could be from like a business perspective and, or like a structure of an ad program and what you think the risks are.
- [34:01]
C
Yeah, so I think like, as far as positives for Roblox goes, you know, anybody who's been following their like, nascent ad platform is like, you know, and listening to their like, earnings presentations. They haven't revealed any numbers in terms of like, revenue on like, how much advertising is bringing in. And they keep saying like, you know, advertising right now is an immaterial part of our business. We expect it's going to be bigger, like down the road. Opening up a third of their inventory to advertising is going to be a big boost for that kind of those kind of like early revenue numbers for sure. And I'm sure they probably didn't want to go public with like their first revenue numbers without monetizing a third of their audience because it probably wouldn't look as good as it could have otherwise. And I think also, like, you know, to the point about like, what's going on with regulations and all this stuff affecting like, the other, like, more pure play, like social media platforms, if it ends up being the case that Roblox isn't subject to some of these, like, regulations, it could effectively then be like one of the only major, like, digital platform that brands can use to deliberately target that under 13 crowd. So that could be a big, like, you know, potential differentiator for Roblox too. I think as far as like, you know, some of maybe the, the potential negatives given all like the kind of like, you know, like bad PR Roblox is getting with all these like, various, like, you know, lawsuits that it's facing, various different state lawsuits, individual lawsuits that have been consolidated into a class action in the state of California. And these are like, you know, to be specific, these are lawsuits that are oriented around concerns that like, you know, the platform doesn't do enough to protect kids from like, child predators and like, exploitive, like, you know, like scammers and stuff that are like, you know, tricking them into spending money that they shouldn't. Stuff like that. So with all those kind of ambient concerns around the platform, if I'm a parent whose kid plays a lot of Roblox now, I'm hearing like, oh, and they're going to be opening that kids up to advertising. I may be concerned about, like, all right, what ads are my kids going to see? What kind of like, brand messages is this going to be stuff that could potentially be harmful to their mental health? You know, like all these various different things. So, like, I think Roblox has a lot to do when it comes to like, assuring parents and like the audience and advertisers too, to be frank, that the platform is safe for kids, that the ad experience is going to be safe for kids. So, you know, they're going to have some convincing to do on that front. But you know, to be fair, they are walking the walk in terms of like, introducing some of these platform, these platform protections and maybe being pro. More proactive than some of their other peers have been.
- [36:34]
A
And it's interesting to kind of bring it back to the intro. I'm like referencing what are the ads that I remember growing up. It's like Keebler the Elf, like cookies, Tony the Tiger, Sweet cereal, Polly Pocket toys. Like, I grew up on the sugar cereal candy toy ads. And you know, even these, I think are being Restricted where? A lot of markets, candy operators don't show ads to kids under 12 or so. So what ads kids could see are restricted. You know, that said, we get the print edition of National Geographic Kids, and my kids were like, oh, my gosh, there's a new Bertie Gregory series. Like, we got to watch it. So it was hilarious to see my kids influenced by an ad. But it was such a. It's a very wholesome program. I highly recommend Victoria.
- [37:25]
B
I feel like a lot of. I mean, this is the joke people constantly make about, like, after, like, Reagan changed the, you know, child protection laws for television, and all of a sudden all the cartoons became glorified ads for toys. Like, the content itself is the ad. A lot of the times not to, you know, besmirch the good name of Bertie Gregory. I'm sure he's a very wonderful. But, you know, like, there's. There's lots of ways to advertise to kids. That.
- [37:50]
C
And Roblox is that bucket, too. They have those, like, branded experiences that, like, you know, companies create on their platform to promote either their products, you know, just raise brand awareness around themselves or even specific, like, movie tie in, like, games and stuff like that. So, like, you know, the methods for reaching kids with advertising haven't really, like, changed, like, at a base level. You know, it's still like the same kind of, like, playbook, I guess, just like the, The. The actual methods of, like, executing those campaigns and like, the technology that, like, is at brand's disposal for doing it, you know, through gaming and other channels has evolved. And so, like, I imagine, like, the things will be pretty similar. Like, you know, it's entirely possible there might be some sugary candy, like, advertised to kids, you know, if the brand doesn't have its own protections in place. But all that stuff remains to be seen.
- [38:41]
B
I would love to see if those branded experiences have ads in them, because that would be pretty devious to find, like, a competitor brand experience.
- [38:50]
C
I asked them about that. They. They avoid all that stuff.
- [38:54]
A
Yeah. Like, I mean, just thinking about childhood overall, right? Like, I think there's. There's the sugary cereal, little kids, you know, and then there's a preteen who's, like, on the verge of, you know, posting about their Sephora skincare haul.
- [39:15]
B
Your skin's fine.
- [39:17]
A
So thank you for joining us. It's been a really interesting conversation about the cultural aspects of advertising in addition to how to make it right as you kind of expand where you're showing ads. So thank you for listening. See you next week. And as always, email sarahchanger if you want to have thoughts. React and maybe we'll feature it in a future episode if you say something juicy. Thanks. This episode was sponsored by Basis, the leading intelligent operating system for autonomous advertising. Its Enterprise AI solution transforms campaign briefs into strategies and media plans that integrate directly into omnichannel activation. Learn more@basis.com.