Generation Media’s Felix Lewis examines how brand activations within online platforms can be done safely and with confidence.
Whenever there is a ‘new’ platform or advertising opportunity, scrutiny is not far away – for both positives and negatives. Recently we have seen Roblox fall under this spotlight. There have been allegations concerning brand safety, and bot involvement encouraging users to perform actions and be exposed to areas that have not been made transparent. TINA (Truth in advertising) has recently investigated the game and found that multiple heritage brands have blurred the lines on what is appropriate; detailing that they are disguising promotional content as games and making it increasingly hard to distinguish this from normal game play.
This is native content in a new sense of advertising and importantly, although adult users may be able to distinguish between a paid for promotion or activation, more than 25m children playing in the metaverse daily are not. As there is a paid for element directly connected to these accounts, this has meant that minors are at risk of exploitation in a space where monetary transactions are commonplace.
With these limitations around brand safety, and confidence not fully assured, brands have to ask themselves which platforms they are comfortable immersing themselves in and aligning with.
To find out to what degree various online platforms are addressing these issues and what assurances they can offer both marketing professionals and end users, read the full article which appeared in the June edition of Toy World, by clicking here.
For more on working with Generation Media, visit the company website here or contact Felix directly on felix.lewis@generationmedia.co.uk. Felix Lewis is Digital Business director at Generation Media, a leading independent specialist for communication to children, families and young people globally. All its work is underpinned by insight and proprietary tools, designed to meet the unique set of objectives for every brief the team receives.
