Unlike other metaverse platforms, Roblox has an abundance of publicly available data on traffic and engagement. With a logged-in account, you can visit any game page and see useful info such as current users, lifetime visits, user rating, and number of favorites. That's super important, especially if you're a brand evaluating the ROI of activating in the metaverse.
Tracking Lifetime Visits vs. Month over Month Visits
When ranking brand experiences, which I last did in August, the easiest way to do it is by comparing lifetime visits. But the problem with this approach is that older experiences that launched months or even years ago can still rank high. If you want to see what's performing well now (to understand what today's consumers are playing most) or understand what monthly performance benchmarks look like, both of which I am very interested in, then you have to track data manually month over month and compare the figures. So that's what I've done here.
Top 3 Branded Games Still Dominating
Sonic Speed Simulator, My Hello Kitty Cafe, and Miraculous RP are the three most-visited brand experiences on Roblox all time, and they also drove the most visits between August and September of 2022. Hello Kitty and Miraculous have around 30 millions visits, but Sonic is about twice as popular with 60 million visits.
How do these games remain so popular? Well, they all have super popular IP known throughout the world, and they are legitimately fun to play. To me one of the key ingredients that might not be obvious is that all of these games regularly release updates with new areas, characters, items, and challenges. These new features keep retention high among existing players and attract new users as well.
Newcomer NARS Color Quest Off to Great Start
What if you don't have super famous characters like Sonic the Hedgehog or Hello Kitty to drive awareness and player engagement? Can you still create a highly trafficked Roblox experience that brings users back?
Well, NARS Cosmetics proved that you can succeed on Roblox with the right execution. Created by Supersocial development studio, NARS Color Quest (launched in July, 2022) had a whopping 20 million monthly visits, which was more than twice the next brand on the list (Tommy Hilfiger with about 8 million visits).
Special shout out to Erik Londre from Karta (my first guest on my new Metaverse Brands podcast) for his Sunsilk game also making the top 10 without recognizable IP. In my podcast, Erik talked about how shampoo brand Sunsilk created a game focused on hair, which is a popular avatar item players use to express themselves on Roblox.
As we've seen with other Roblox brand activations like Nike's Nikeland, having the biggest name or budget doesn't necessarily guarantee success. What matters most is creating a fun experience that Roblox players genuinely enjoy and keep coming back to.
Old Timers Still Going Strong
Hot Wheels (launched September, 2020) and Vans (launched April, 2021), two brands that were quite early to platform are still putting up strong traffic numbers many months after launching. Both games have recently released updates, so that certainly helps keeps users interested. They each also have strong user ratings (Hot Wheels 88% and Vans 92%), so clearly users like them a lot.
Traffic and Monetization
Thanks to this analysis, we now have a better sense of what successful monthly traffic benchmarks look like for brands on Roblox. Traffic is not the same as monetization, and most brands are coming to Roblox to execute marketing campaigns. But if you have high traffic and an audience that keeps coming back, it makes generating revenue much more possible.