There are some key elements that brands must evaluate when making the critical decision of where to activate their presence on these platforms: we rolled them out for you!
Roblox, Fortnite, and Spatial are three of the main competitors in the landscape of User-Generated Content (UGC) gaming platforms in today's market, offering brands innovative ways to engage their audience.
These platforms provide a range of tools for creating branded games and experiences centered around a brand's products and values, reaching a broader audience, and creating memorable experiences that surpass traditional advertising methods. A new dimension of marketing utilized by many of the world's most famous brands to generate additional revenue, enhance brand value, or expand customer experience.
Choosing the most suitable platform to build one's branded experience requires careful evaluation of many factors. Each of the three platforms has unique characteristics and offers multiple opportunities and strengths. Let's summarize them briefly.
Fortnite
Fortnite has become a benchmark in the world of online gaming, especially for its innovative approach and the quality of experiences offered. With epic in-game events and partnerships with famous brands like Marvel and Nike, Fortnite offers a dynamic and engaging environment for branding.
Sponsorship of in-game events provides companies with the opportunity to reach an immense audience. Furthermore, the presence of virtual concerts and in-game movie screenings provides an additional opportunity for companies to connect with their audience in a unique and engaging way.
Fortnite Creative and Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) are the specific tools to design, develop, and publish content into Fortnite. They take advantage of the Unreal Engine’s development workflows, advanced PC-based toolset, and new Verse scripting language. Professional developers are familiar with Unreal Engine because they often use it to create fantastic games of all kinds for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, mobile, PC, and Mac.
Fortnite stands out for its fame achieved through its extraordinary graphics, spectacular in-game events, and images so stunning they seem real.
Roblox
Roblox is a virtual platform for online experiences that has gained enormous popularity in recent years, reaching over 200 million monthly active users as of 2024. This aspect makes Roblox fertile ground for branding, as companies can create custom games or interactive experiences to promote their products or services.
Most brands currently involved in Roblox are leveraging the platform as a marketing channel to connect with Generation Z consumers. Furthermore, Roblox offers many monetization tools that allow companies to generate revenue, providing an additional incentive for collaboration.
Roblox Studio serves as the utility tool that enables users to craft games for Roblox. It comes with a host of powerful 3D building tools as well as scripting, debugging, and testing features. You have the capability to design diverse gaming environments and servers brimming with entertaining pursuits such as mini-games, challenging obstacle courses, and immersive role-playing narratives.
Roblox offers extensive flexibility in game design and many monetization opportunities through the creation of fully customized games.
Spatial
Spatial was founded in 2016 with the aim of designing high-quality 3D spaces for collaboration and social interaction, with a special focus on the world of digital art and fashion. It has provided artists worldwide with the opportunity to showcase their projects through exhibitions and fashion shows, and soon its usage expanded to include music and video games, which are now the main focus of the platform.
With the recent introduction of the Creator Toolkit, a Unity-based software development kit (SDK), Spatial has taken a leap forward in offering even more immersive experiences with rich photorealistic rendering, less dispersion, and a more realistic lighting. Unity is commonly used by professional developers to create create and grow in real-time 2D and 3D games, apps, and experiences for many platforms, including PC, gaming consoles, mobile devices, and virtual/augmented reality.
Another strength of Spatial is its accessibility: users do not need to purchase specific devices but can freely use it on mobile and desktop without installing additional applications, paving the way for a very broad audience, including adults.
In addition to designing branded games, companies can use Spatial to host virtual events, showrooms and meetings, offering an experience that goes beyond traditional online marketing.
Fortnite Roblox Spatial: how to evaluate the most suitable platform
The choice of platform inevitably depends on the specific needs of the company and the goal of the branding or marketing campaign. However, there are some key elements that brands must evaluate when making the critical decision of where to build their own presence on these platforms: who is your target audience? How will they find you? What kind of experience can you build to excite and engage them? What are your goals?
User Base
When it comes to user reach, both Roblox and Fortnite boast huge player bases.
Roblox is a thriving platform with a diverse audience, extremely popular among the younger demographics. Roblox currently has 70.2 million daily and over 216 million monthly active users. With millions of experiences on offer, it can be challenging for smaller brands to stand out. Brands, however, don't necessarily have to create their own experience on Roblox to gain visibility on the platform, thanks to Roblox's new Adv services.
Fortnite also offers a similarly large user base, ensuring a user base across different age groups, with a strong male prevalence. It has over 500 million registered players as of 2024 and around 221 million monthly active players according to ActivePlayers.com.
Spatial has a much smaller user base, stopping at a monthly user base of around 2 million active player per month. However, this doesn't mean that Spatial isn't an interesting platform to bet on: a smaller community can be easier to reach and engage compared to vast audiences.
Demographic Targeting
Understanding the demographic target is fundamental for effective brand communication.
Roblox is dominated by very young users: 60% of users are under 16 years old. Only 17% of Roblox users are over 25 years old. Brands that have collaborated the most with Roblox tend to be primarily toy and entertainment brands, major retailers, and shoe companies. As of December 2023, Roblox reported that 53 percent of global Roblox game users were male while women accounted for 39 percent of the online gaming company's user base (9% unknown).
62.7% of Fortnite players fall into the age group of 18 to 24 years old (of which 72% are male), with 22.5% being between 25 and 34. Around 85% of Fortnite players are aged 18 to 35. Brands that have collaborated more with Fortnite tend to be media companies.
On Spatial, over 34% of players are aged between 25 and 34 years old, with 14% between 35 and 44 years old, with an adult base growing annually. It is, therefore, the platform that offers a more mature target compared to Fortnite and especially compared to Roblox. Spatial is the most gender-balanced platform of the three: 55.85% male and 44.15% female.
Development Costs
Considering development costs is important for brands looking to establish a presence on UGC platforms. All three platforms provide turnkey solutions to allow brands to build their own immersive experience. While Roblox and Fortnite both adopt a "free to create" model, Spatial is based on a "freemium" model.
Building on these platforms entails lower initial access costs and offers the advantage of already established communities compared to creating a private metaverse from scratch. This allows brands to focus the budget on the experience creation.
However, when building an experience, it's not only crucial to create something creative; that's just 50%. The other 50% is: how do you make it known to the world and ensure participation? Therefore, in defining the budget, it is also important to set the duration of the project.
The duration of an integration can significantly influences budget allocation: for a 12-month campaign, marketing will need a higher percentage than a 6-week commitment because it will be necessary to continue pushing people to participate and raise awareness.
Long-Term and Short-Term Brand Activations
Most brands that enter these platforms have previously opted for temporary brand activations focused on a short-term campaign rather than continuous experiences.
Temporary activations are certainly the most cost-effective solution when a brand enters a new platform to gather feedback and lower the barrier to entry for brands that are testing the waters while waiting for concrete results.
Although short-term initiatives have their advantages, especially at the beginning of the adventure, to consolidate results and significantly increase the user base, it's important to consider establishing a continuous presence.
Production Timelines
Time is often a critical factor in marketing strategy, and the speed of implementation can have a significant impact on the success of a new project.
Of the three platforms, Fortnite usually requires slightly longer timelines for designing an experience compared to Spatial and Roblox, due to its higher complexity.
However, new low-code tools are making it easier and faster than ever to create and distribute increasingly solid and creative virtual experiences.
Monetization Opportunities
Roblox (Robux), Fortnite (vBucks), and Spatial (Spatial Coins, coming soon) offer in-game purchase opportunities, but currently, none of them involve a real-world e-commerce. Brands have various opportunities to monetize their presence, but they cannot directly sell their goods in the real world through these platforms yet. The business model includes the ability for brands to monetize their content by allowing them to convert virtual currency into real money through various parameters.
Roblox is the most flexible and innovative platform regarding monetization, allowing creators to choose the approach that suits them best. There are many approaches available to monetize content, from in-game item purchases to engagement-based payments, from offering private servers to play only with friends to the recent introduction of the Immersive Ads system. It's also possible to charge for access to the experience. Given the many options available, it's essential to carefully study these methods, as users may not appreciate your experience if ineffective monetization strategies are proposed.
In the case of Fortnite, a percentage of net revenues from the Fortnite Item Store and most real-money purchases are distributed proportionally to engagement to all creators with published "islands" on a monthly basis. All content published in the Fortnite ecosystem contributes to the engagement payment economy. Creators can create and sell custom events, skins, and game locations in line with the brand's identity.
In Spatial, you can also hyperlink digital assets to create a gallery of collections to display. Spatial users can also restrict access to their space only to users that own a specific asset or control the amount of a specified asset that a user must own to access a space. Also, lead generation on Spatial is on another level compared to traditional social networks. New monetization features aimed at Spatial creators are currently in closed beta development, and Spatial is finalizing the active monitoring phase of input and feedback from users to ensure that the platform best meets the needs of creators.
Data Ownership and Analytics
Ownership and management of user data are fundamental considerations for brands entering the metaverse. Collecting user data to improve the gaming experience is essential, but data ownership and usage policies differ depending on the platform.
Fortnite, Spatial, and Roblox have similar privacy policies, but brands must carefully review the data ownership and usage policies of each platform, considering their specific requirements and legal obligations, such as brand visibility or advertising.
All three platforms can also provide many important data analytics to understand how engaging the immersive experience is: from the daily number of users to the average playtime, to the percentage of players who return to repeat the experience. And much more…
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Evaluating the most suitable platform for a brand's needs requires considering factors such as user base, demographic targeting, development costs, production timelines, monetization opportunities, and data ownership.
Each platform offers unique strengths and opportunities for branding and marketing, and choosing the right one depends on the specific goals and requirements of the brand's campaign.
If you are seeking guidance on platform activation strategies for brands, together with creativity and expertise to start building your new world, you can reach out to our team and explore the many possibilities of immersive marketing to boost engagement and level up your marketing strategies!
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