Are Roblox Ads Actually Effective? What the Immersive Advertising Data Shows

Roblox's 'Immersive is Effective' study tells us what we already know: ads in immersive worlds are more engaging. However, this is only scratching the surface of opportunities in immersive worlds: the real advantage is participating in a world, not watching an ad inside one.

Key takeaways

Roblox arrived at Cannes this week with its 'Immersive is Effective' study. With Ipsos, it ran the same ten brand ads across five environments and found its own formats beat streaming and social:

The message to brands was direct: immersive is the new standard, so move your ad budget.

Two things worth flagging about the study. The panel was small and self-reported, 200 users per platform, US, ages 13-34 and Roblox paid for the work¹. Whilst we can believe the direction, not the exact numbers, we don't need to get hung up on the method because the result is the one you would predict anyway. The study measured attention to ads while people were actively playing, against attention to ads while people watched a show or scrolled a feed. A player is already leaning in, where a viewer is leaning back. Comparing the two and finding that 'leaning-in' wins is close to measuring whether people notice more when they are paying attention.

The number is important to Roblox regardless because its ad business competes directly with streaming and social budgets. To draw money away it has to prove better outcomes by the buyers' own measures: attention, recall, intent. So the study is designed to speak to the ad buyer's goals and priorities. That is reasonable for Roblox to do and the report is clear about its scope. It is about immersive ads and it never pretends otherwise.

The in-world ads are truly immersive. A Video Billboard or a Rewarded Video runs inside a Roblox world, which is exactly why they beat an ad in a show or on a feed: the player is already there, leaning in. But watching an ad inside an immersive world is still a shallower mode of engagement.

All of them ask people to watch. The mode the report does not measure is the one where the player plays and participates in the world rather than watching something inside it: a brand integration, or an owned world.

Across watching and participating, the immersive world is the constant. What changes is what the player does inside it.

Brand integrations and owned worlds ask the player to participate and neither of them has an equivalent on streaming or social. A billboard has a billboard equivalent everywhere but a world people choose to spend an hour in does not. And if the shallowest formats already beat streaming and social, the deeper ones should win by more. The argument for the effectiveness of participation is stronger than the one Roblox published. It just isn't the argument that will move ad budgets in the short-term.

Measurement is catching up for integrations and owned worlds. Alongside the study, Roblox brought in EDO to benchmark branded events and campaigns against the metrics it uses for TV³. And from August its own standardised reporting for brand integrations goes into beta. Reporting will be based on IAB elements to determine a qualified visit, giving brands metrics they are familiar with across channels. Roblox will also use the qualified visit measure to calculate the ad integrations fee it charges creators in 2027⁴. This isn't a move from no measurement to measurement. Brands could always see a world's visits and session length, so they knew which worlds were working and which weren't. What they lacked was a standardised version of it, one that judged a world or an integration against the rest of their media plan on the same terms.

So the question is how many worlds were left to decay because the brand could not defend the spend in the terms it needed to, not because it could not see them working. EDO and the August reporting start to close that gap. For the first time, a brand can defend a world in numbers, not just belief.

Roblox proved the easy half of its own story and increasingly has the measurement in place to prove the harder half. So I hope there is a second Ipsos study ready to go soon after the August reporting. One that measures the effectiveness of immersive integrations, not just the ads that run beside them. Immersive watching was the warm-up, participation is the truly interesting part.

Daniel O'Sullivan LFG Studio · [email protected]

Are Roblox ads effective? In the EDO×Roblox / Ipsos study, immersive ads on Roblox drew more attention than streaming and social, because an actively playing user attends more than a passive viewer. Read it as directionally right rather than precise: the panel was small, self-reported and Roblox-funded.

What is the difference between watching and participating in an immersive world? Watching means seeing a brand's ad while you play (immersive ad formats). Participating means playing inside the brand's own world. The effectiveness study covers the watching end; participation is the deeper, less-measured mode.

Do immersive ads work better than TV or social? On attention, the study says yes, an engaged player beats a passive viewer. But it is an attention study, not a full-funnel outcome study, so treat it as one signal, not proof of sales.

When is Roblox getting standardised ad measurement? Roblox has signalled standardised, IAB-style measurement arriving around August 2026, which will let brands compare immersive spend against other media on a like-for-like basis.