Roblox in-game ads coming soon, Microsoft and Sony to follow suit

pcgamesn.com:

Roblox in-game ads are coming soon, and while advertisers are heralding the platform as a leader in such technology, major players like Microsoft and Sony are reportedly set to follow suit soon. For Roblox, such in-game ads offer an opportunity for its thousands of independent game developers to earn extra cash for their free-to-play games by allowing in-game ads. However, Microsoft and Sony are looking to introduce similar technology into their free-to-play live service games, many of which already benefit from the monetisation of battle passes and cosmetic item sales.

Roblox’s two major immersive advertising forms include in-game billboards and other forms of virtual ads, which will allow advertisers to advertise across multiple experiences at once, and portals, which will teleport from a developer’s game to a different experience, presumably run by a brand. Both will allow the development team behind each of the sandbox game‘s experiences to earn a share of the ad revenue. It may seem ironic that this is the type of advertising Ready Player One warned against in the book that spawned many of the concepts surrounding today’s metaverse rhetoric. However, some Roblox developers, including the developer of one of Roblox’s most popular games, have recently been complaining about the disproportionately low amount of revenue they receive from their games when compared to the gross total.

It seems Roblox’s immersive advertising rollout is only the start of a bigger trend, as Microsoft and Sony are strategising how to incorporate advertising into their free-to-play games as well. A recent Insider article reports that Microsoft is working on adapting its own technology to allow in-game billboard advertising within Xbox games,