Should a Brand Build Its Own Kids' Game or Buy Space in Someone Else's?

Key takeaways

A brand as a guest in another brand's house.

On 21 August adidas opened inside Toca Boca World¹. A free outdoor location with a skate park, a basketball court and a football pitch, premium style packs and limited-edition items given away in-game. The target was tween girls, who start dropping out of sport around 14. Spin Master hosted it in the world with close to 60 million fans.

Toca Boca World is an app rather than a Roblox game. Brands inside popular games are nothing new, the difference here is the landlord. Toca Boca owns the world and the relationship with the children in it. It has decided that relationship is something another brand can borrow, on its terms.

We don't know whether adidas paid for access or if their branded content was the benefit in kind. Either way the host set the terms and adidas is a guest in someone else's house.

It wasn't the only decision of its kind in August.

Three announcements in a fortnight.

They aren't one strategy. Mattel is building for its own brands and its announcement says nothing about hosting anyone else's. What the three share is capability. Three companies that own large kids' audiences have decided that making games is something they do themselves, at scale.

That capability is the precondition for the rest. A company that can build its own world can also decide who else gets to be in it. Two of the three have started.

In the last newsletter I made one last point before closing: a world with a returning audience becomes somewhere other brands want to be and hosting them costs the host nothing in retention⁴. I gave a Roblox example, an IP-owned world hosting a film brand. What August shows is an IP owner outside Roblox doing the same thing on purpose.

Three landlords to choose between, not two.

For most of the past five years a brand director thinking about a persistent presence in gaming chose between two landlords. Themselves, by building an owned world, which starts with nobody in it and suits IP people already love. Or a creator on an open platform, by integrating into a popular game, which borrows that creator's audience for a few weeks and commands a fee that scales with the audience⁵.

The third landlord is an IP owner. On paper the deal looks like the second: the host holds the data, sets the duration and ends the placement. The difference is that this host is itself a consumer brand, with its own products, its own brand-fit veto and sometimes its own shop in the same world. A creator wants the placement to work. An IP owner wants that too, but wants its own brand to come first.

adidas has used both in three months, a Roblox creator in the spring⁵ and an IP owner in August. The same brand using two landlords is a good illustration of what persistent presence looks like.

What each landlord gives and takes.

None of the three is right for every brand. The brand's goals decide, which is the argument I made back in Edition 6.

Be the landlord. The brand keeps everything: the data, how often the world updates, the world itself after any campaign ends. It costs money to build and more to keep alive. It starts with zero players and it suits brands with IP the audience already knows.

Rent from a creator. Fast reach, millions in front of the brand in week one, an integration at any budget. The audience belongs to the creator, the placement ends when the campaign does and the fee rises with play.

Rent from an IP owner. The audience is already there and already the right age: tween girls or pre-schoolers or whichever the host built for. The host has already done the work on brand safety and age-appropriateness and has as much to lose as the brand. A creator has every reason to be careful. An IP owner whose own name is on the door has no choice. In exchange the host sets the rules on data, duration and creative. The host's own brand is also in the same room and comes first. When the campaign ends the room is still theirs.

Four things to think about before committing budget.

A brand director considering a placement inside an IP owner's world should get answers to these first.

The fourth is where the two sides can disagree. A host reports the numbers it tracks, which are numbers that suit its world. The question is whether they're the same ones the brand would use anywhere else.

The same four questions have easy answers for an owned world, because the brand is the host. That's the trade-off in a nutshell.

Where that leaves brands.

The companies that own large kids' audiences now build their own worlds and some of them have started opening the door.

A brand hosted by an IP owner gets a matched audience faster than it could build one and a landlord with a brand of its own. The brand's goals still decide and the clearest test is a question about the day after the campaign ends: what does the brand want to still own?

Daniel O'Sullivan LFG Studio [email protected]

FAQ

How do brands get into kids' games? Three ways. A brand can build and run its own world, which it then owns outright. It can integrate into a popular game on an open platform such as Roblox, borrowing that creator's audience for a few weeks. Or it can buy a placement inside a world an IP owner built for its own audience, such as adidas inside Toca Boca World in August 2026.

What is the adidas Toca Boca partnership? On 21 August 2026 adidas opened a free outdoor location inside Toca Boca World, Spin Master's app with close to 60 million fans, alongside premium style packs and limited-edition in-game items. The brief was tween girls, who start dropping out of sport around 14. No commercial terms were published.

Is it better to build a branded game or place a brand in an existing one? Neither is right for every brand. Building means starting with no players but owning the data, the update cadence and the world after any campaign ends. Placing means reaching a matched audience immediately, on the host's terms, with nothing left behind on the end date. The brand's goals decide.

What should a brand ask before buying a placement in someone else's game? Four things. Who owns the audience data that comes back. What persists after the campaign, including whether items players earned stay in their inventories. Whether there is a path from a one-off placement to a standing presence. And how it is measured, specifically whether the host's numbers are comparable to the ones the brand would use to judge its own world.

Can brands get audience data from kids' games? Very little, and that is a legal constraint rather than a negotiating position. With under-13s, children's privacy law limits what can be collected and passed back. Aggregate reporting is usually the most a brand should expect, which is workable as long as it is understood before the budget is committed.

Why are toy and kids' media companies building their own game studios? They already own the audience and the characters. Building the interactive layer in-house rather than commissioning it gives them control of the place where that audience spends time. Mattel, Spin Master's Toca Boca and Lingokids each did some version of this in August 2026. The consequence for brands is that some of those companies can now decide who else gets to be in that world.