Roblox: How the Game Beats out TV for Reaching Kids

Every marketer worth their salt knows that the key to their craft is reaching the maximum number of their target audience. While TV has long dominated as the marketer platform of choice, a surprising actor has entered the fray, quickly eclipsing their reach, extending it to a whole new level.

Roblox Era

Beating out all current US and UK youth programming, the highly successful videogame Roblox has become a top contender for reaching younger audiences around the world.

Video games have increased vastly in popularity, especially over the last decade. With their reach, they formulated themselves into a vehicle for reaching out to all sorts of audiences. They are also beginning to change the ways in which businesses mechanize their kids marketing strategies. As the popularity increases, advertising budgets are being more regularly diverted from being predominantly set aside for television to use more on the uprising, underrated platform with massive audience reach.

Tree roblox characters - two people and a wolf are running and holding swords in hands

Take this in: Media Mix Compass’s research has found that these days, a teenager spends almost an hour and a half daily engaged in video gameplay. By contrast, that is longer than they spend watching television. Media Mix Scores bases its calculations on 1over 1,500 channels across 11 media variations.

Their findings concluded that 62% of a kid’s available time is spent engaged in some form of digital media. When comparing Media Mix Scores side by side, Cartoon Network scores a rating of 76, while Disney reaches 90, and Nickelodeon edges out Disney at 91. Roblox blows those numbers away with a whopping score of 128.

Now, consider that brands allocate only roughly 37% of their marketing budget reaching out to kids who spend that much time on digital platforms. This creates a vast spending disparity resulting in a massive $1.15 billion cost to advertisers in 2021.

TV remains a powerful contender but has consistently come in second to video games in terms of reaching the youth demographic. They are now garnering a huge chunk of the audience. As the vastness of online entertainment grows, with a greater variety of entertainment channels starting up, kids will be drawn to digital platforms over traditional ones in growing numbers. It is also important to account for the increasing power of influence that children wield in their entertainment choices these days versus prior years. In fact, in 2020, children’s influence across decision-making of entertainment platforms far outpaced 2019.

Lol and Roblox Collaboration

One of the main beneficiaries of leveraging Roblox has been the toy industry. LOL Surprise has been able to set up a collaborative relationship with Roblox, giving young fans an increasingly immersive experience. Recently, MGA Entertainment moved forward with plans of incorporating their LOL Surprise brand with the popular video game. When the collaboration launches, gamers will be able to engage in the combined world of Roblox and LOLs, while playing with some of the gaming industry’s top influencers.

The pandemic has brought out an immense rise in other aspects of reaching audiences via gaming platforms. Twitch, the streaming platform giant now delivers an increasing volume of streaming content. Specifically, their incorporation of eSports has been very notable.

Considering that eSports is only behind video games and YouTube in its appeal to 10 to 12-year-old boys in the UK, incorporating kids marketing or marketing for generation Z through these platforms would seem like a no-brainer for any suitable brand. In April of 2020, when sporting events were put on an indefinite pause, Twitch streamed League of Legends European Championship live, garnering the platform’s record viewing numbers with over 819,000 viewers seeing the final.

Other unexpected industries have benefitted from the video game to product marketing crossover. The International Chess Federation confirmed record sales of chess boards due to vastly growing numbers of chess match viewerships on Twitch.

With current generations growing up more in tune with digital platforms and new social media trends, marketers have had to overcome challenges in how this audience is reached. There are now countless choices for people to engage with, in terms of entertainment. This results in a far more divided attention across many platform ranges. All of this burdens marketers with finding new solutions to reach the audiences and results in strategic partnerships that can bolster their targeted audience reach.