WPP announces global partnership with Roblox

WPP has announced a global partnership with Roblox that will enable the holding company's clients to use Roblox as a media channel and deepen expertise among agency teams.

WPP and Roblox will host client "sprint days" with community creators, developer studios and agency strategists to develop a unique activation in a single business day.

Group M, WPP's media investment arm, will join the Roblox Partner Program to establish a long-term measurement advisory relationship, setting standards for 3D environments and immersive media.

The collaboration is also working on a Roblox certification programme with a multi-module training course for both creative and media agencies. WPP team members will be prioritised for this.

Rob Reilly, chief creative officer of WPP, said: “Roblox is an amazing platform for brands to engage creatively with a young, expanding and valuable audience. By merging WPP’s creative firepower with Roblox’s innovative environment, we will continue to invent new and exciting ways for brands to connect with the next generation of consumers." 

Earlier this year, Roblox rolled out in-platform video ads so that brands could run advertising without building a game on the platform. Elf Beauty, Hugo, Walmart, Warner Bros. Pictures and Dentsu were early testers of video ads. 

Brands including Specsavers have made their debut on the platform to engage with generation alpha.

The partnership coincides with a report from Hindenburg Research, which describes itself as an "investment research firm with a focus on activist short-selling". It alleges that Roblox has inflated data and inadequately protected children from harmful content.

The research purported that Roblox has conflated the amount of “people” coming to the platform with daily active users, which are “not a measure of unique individuals accessing Roblox”, because they can include numerous accounts run by a single person, such as alternate or bot accounts. It also claims that Roblox has inflated its engagement data.

Hindenburg claimed young users were exposed to grooming, pornography and violence, and that safety was being compromised in an attempt to boost profits. It said there were no age controls on chat rooms dedicated to adult material.

As a test, the firm attempted to set up an account under the name "Jeffrey Epstein" only to see the name was taken, along with more than 900 variations.

A Roblox spokesman said: “We totally reject the claims made in the report. Safety and civility have been foundational to Roblox since our inception nearly two decades ago, and we have invested heavily throughout our history in our trust and safety efforts.

“Every day, tens of millions of people of all ages have a safe and positive experience on Roblox, abiding by our community standards.

“We take any content or behaviour on the platform that doesn’t abide by our standards extremely seriously and we have a robust set of proactive and preventative safety measures designed to catch and prevent malicious or harmful activity on our platform.”