Get ready for real ads in virtual worlds, thanks to new Google-Roblox team-up

Imagine that, not too long from now, you roll up to a virtual hotel in Roblox. As you tell the player who’s roleplaying a concierge that you’re there to check in, an advertisement scrolls along the wall behind them. But unlike the rest of the hotel’s decor, this ad isn’t purely virtual. It’s for Coca-Cola‘s latest flavor, or Taco Bell‘s newest menu item.

Thanks to a new partnership between Google and Roblox, that scenario is about to become reality.

Like most major tech companies, Google threw its hat into the metaverse ring during the 2020/2021 fervor. It didn’t get as deep as some other competitors (ahem, “Meta”), and its ambitions later seemed to fizzle out. But Roblox, a game creation platform that launched back in 2006, somehow has positioned itself as the company most likely to make a successful metaverse play.

This new wave of ads, powered by Google’s Ad Manager, could cement that position even more.

“Immersive Ads exist within the gaming experience, whether it’s a billboard ad you see driving through a virtual city or an ad on the big screen during a virtual football game. They blend naturally into the game environment, enhancing the experience,” Google said in a company blog post. “The new partnership between Roblox and Ad Manager is foundational to Roblox’s immersive advertising strategy, enabling them to scale Rewarded Video and other immersive formats to brands in the coming weeks and months.”

While a big part of this deal involves letting brands place ads within game environments, another “immersive format” Google and Roblox debuted are the “Rewarded Video”

Reward ads are full-screen, 30-second video ads that will give Roblox players material, in-game rewards for watching them.

Roblox gave a little more context, saying that early tests of reward ads showed 80% of players watched them to completion, earning things like in-game items, power-ups, and currencies. Test players apparently “considered these ads additive to their overall experience,” it said.

Brands interested in sewing their ads into Roblox backgrounds or using the full-screen reward ads will be able to buy them through Google’s Ad Manager “in the coming weeks,” Roblox said.

The idea of real brands injecting themselves in Roblox isn’t a new one (hello, Chipotle!), but we don’t often see this kind of advertising in games. Sure, boot up Cyberpunk 2077 and you’ll see thousands of hologram ads scrolling across buildings in Night City. But those ads aren’t for real companies. These new Google x Roblox ads are–and they aim to have people thinking about real-world brands while they’re playing beloved games.

And maybe this initiative will work. Maybe more gaming platforms will pick them up. Maybe next time someone clinches that sweet solo win in Fortnite, they’ll remember the balloon passing overhead, trailing a banner that reminds them McDonald’s just brought back the McRib.

For now, the ads seem like they’ll be pretty unintrusive (though it also seems there won’t be an option to turn them off…). So, no Ready Player One dystopia…yet.