Games platform Roblox has finally announced how large a cut it will take from brand integrations.
Speaking to GamesBeat, the company said that it was going to be charging creators on a cost-per-mille (CPM aka per thousand visits) basis. This varies from region to region; for US visitors, it’ll cost $1.50, but only $0.75 for visitors from the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Nordic countries. Visitors from Western Europe, Japan and South Korea will yield a cost of $0.20, while players from the rest of the world will cost $0.05.
After 28 days, a campaign will yield a flat rate of $0.10 per thousand customers for everyone. These costs will come into effect on January 1, 2027.
Before they launch brand integrations, Roblox creators can forecast and ‘lock in’ revenue-share fees, allowing them to predict how much they will be on the hook for and thus pass some of this cost on to the advertiser. Forecasts will be based on the 56 days before the brand integration is signed.
“Some creators really want to show integrations to everyone on the platform and want to make sure everyone has access, but we also want transparency for the brand to understand and know what they’re getting, and the value that they’re getting,” Roblox senior product manager for ads and monetisation Nick McLachlan said.
He continued: “We want to get more targeted with this – we want to be able to say: ‘Hey, if you’re looking for users just in the U.S., we have the technical ability to limit that now,’ and we want to help people forecast based on that. So, as we get more precise based on where or who people want to reach, obviously, within the privacy constraints that we have, we want to pass that on to creators and let them price accordingly as well. So this should only get more sophisticated from here.”
Word that Roblox planned to charge creators for brand integrations broke earlier this year, but the company insisted at the time that this “really is not about revenue”.
“It’s about evolving our responsibility to our users, creators and brand,” the firm’s VP of global brand partnerships and advertising, Stephanie Latham, said at the time.
“Brands are already part of everyday life on Roblox, and this is a strategic response to the increased commercial intent that we’re seeing every day on the platform.”
