Roblox Hits 120 Million Players and Everyone Is Shocked!

[Music] Speaking of hardcore fans, I think it's time to talk about Eric's favorite topic, which is our quarterly torture of
Roblox earnings report, which slayed once again. We are past 100 million DAU. I thought this would be the case in the summer. They reported, everyone sit down for this. Brace yourself. 112 million DAU. They're up 41% Jesus.
Year-over-year. 41% year-over-year in DA.
And CPO left. By the way, I don't know if this is in in your news cuz everybody's ready to to sell their first born to be a CPO of Roblox.
The the other thing that was interesting is we have our usual DAU by age and DAOU by region. On the region side, we're seeing growth across a lot of different regions. So it's not just tier three. And on the age group, I think we still have the same hypothesis. Is it people

who are under 13 aging into over 13? But regardless, the over 13 is the one that's growing the largest. 71 million DAU are over 13 and about 40 million DAU are under 13. That's a very important statistic. So, so roughly 2/3 of their users are over the age of 13. I think that's another really important observation from them.
By the way, it's also completely untrue.
Why do you think it's untrue? Why do you think it's untrue? The tracking. The tracking.
How do you track when you don't track on mobile?
Yeah. You don't have age verification. All you do is that you have an opt-in and you tell them what age you are and they're using it to get access to certain features on games. Period. End of sentence. Right. And so
the question is, Eric is like, why is that growing as a relative share? Why is the relative amount of over 13s growing? Have they done a change to have they restricted or allowed access to certain things based on age that would make people more likely to lie over time?
Yeah. I mean, there's certain content

that people want to get access to and so they put the age gate on, but they know it won't impact them. So, yeah, I'm sure that's part of it, right?
The true age is on the platform then, Eric? Do you think it's getting older? What do you think the true age on the platform is?
Oh, I think it's like I think it's like the other way around. Like 66, 33, probably if I were to guess. I do think that the older age is going to games like Dress to Impress, Brook Haven, the more female oriented games are able to sustain some of the older players. That's where I think it's going. But I agree, Chris, that it a lot of that's [ __ ] because with 80% of the audience on mobile and we all know mobile doesn't track things and how difficult it is for mobile to track that that is very very difficult for them to continue to understand with accuracy those numbers.
Look, I I also want to say like I don't really care about engagement numbers like these numbers, this matters to Wall Street a lot, right? But the bull thesis

really on roadblocks was all about menuel and unlocking revenue and unlocking revenue from those audiences that actually generate revenue which is basically tier one English countries right so if the CCUs are growing and all this other stuff that's great but it's really about monetization right and that that's what is more bullish for Roblox and that's why when Manuel kind of took over like I think it was last June like a year ago he took over basically monetization that was exciting I mean he's working on it for a while, but he was actually more officially put in charge of lots of different aspects of them monetizing. So, that's what was bullish. And him leaving is scary, right, to some degree. And so, the fact that he's leaving makes me a little bit worried after about four and a half years he's been there. And just to just to be clear, he did kind of the the evolution of the creator economy in 2021-22, but in mid 2024 is when he really started to like actually make real big significant changes. The

virtual billboard ads inside the experiences, which I think is stupid, but that was like the initial part of it. The launch of rewarded video ads, which is absolutely huge, right? Huge, right? That would happen in early 2025. July creative awards, daily engagements and audience expansions and then most recent thing was the licensing manager and IP license platform stuff that he's done. So
anyway, so he basically became in charge in partnership as I've said earlier with David and the CEO and that was actually kind of I think what's driving lots of the new changes there. So look, I love the CCU. All that stuff is a great story, but that's not as relevant as what the monetization part of it in my opinion. So, let me help you there. Let me help you there because you you're you're right here. We're looking at average bookings per DAU. And if you look at US and Canada, $40 average bookings per DAU. You look at APAC, $5. Yeah.
You look at Row, $5. You look at Europe, $10. So, US and Canadian user is worth

4x a European user, which is the second highest.
Right. And if you take out the UK out of Europe, it will probably be a lot worse. You put out Oh, I think they're poor. Yeah, I don't think they're anything to write home about.
Sweden, different story. But that being said, 18% 18% growth in year-over-year bookings for US and Canadian players as they've scaled the N2. They should be adding lower margin users. And maybe they are, but they've lifted the average so much that they're up 18%. That's still impressive. And I still don't think those initiatives, Eric, have come online fully too and the advertising initiatives.
Exactly.
Yeah. Rewarded ads, as I've been talking to people. Everyone's excited about it, but everyone's taking very much a wait and see because, you know, the tech is still kind of coming into place. The partnerships, I mean, Google is a major partner on this. The attribution needs to come into place for this to fully happen. I think we'll know more soon.

But this is where I think Eric is wrong about the engagement numbers because engagement now matters when you have ads. So like for instance taking hours engaged in DAOU like you you should multiply those things together that becomes relevant because that's more time on the platform is more ads you can watch again I still think monetization will dictate ECPMs but I don't think it's irrelevant anymore it definitely matters to some
you're right that that's a good point you're right with that with ads now ma that does matter particularly engagement in the US right which clearly this grow your garden thing has been a huge hit in the US and tier one go countries so
does grow your garden even do in ad [ __ ]
I don't know yet. I haven't checked in on ads yet, but it's a really good point. So, this is a chart that shows peak CCUs. And so, what happens every Saturday at like 7 a.m. Pacific time, they update the game with new, you know, plants and all that stuff. And a lot of it is
they do restocking, too. I think there's so much in the game economy we should talk about, too. It's I was wrong in my

first assessment of this. I was completely and utterly wrong. Like I was like, "Oh man, what what could we learn from this?" The game economy is very deep. There is a live op strategy. There is a [ __ ] ton going on this game. This is not just some random game by a teenager. It's a machine.
It is the most egregious, gross example of monetization design ever concocted by man, okay? It's like it is like every [ __ ] trap and like extraction mechanism for the customer. I mean, it's [ __ ] beautiful like in its deprevity, you know? That's just ridiculous.
If you could give an award for freeto play, what did you used to call it? Like the egregious money grabbing of freeto play of just
diabolic. I think he was diabolic.
Oh, what did you used to call it? You used to argue with Phil all the time of like the dark arts of freeto play monet. Like this game does all of it.
All of it. So the thing I wanted to hit just just on the number side is Roblox itself hit

a peak CCU of 33 million in mid July which is very much driven to these peaks. So Grow a garden peaks in CCU on their weekends in the 20 to 22 million player range. And when you look at the number of visits, and I know visits in Roblox is a little bit of a vanity metric, but they've had 23 billion visits since the game launched, and the game only really launched in like Aprilish. And so I've been following the growth of this. And when the kind of like influencer publisher guy like took it over and started posting, like his Tik Toks got like 30 million views and that's how they really launched and like really grew the game. And so what he does is he gets out and basically shills the hell out of this each week, telling people what to be excited for. This game has not fallen off. You know, look at those peak. You know, we saw those peaks. One, two, three, four, five, like six peaks of 20 to 22 million. TCU shows

that it's not dying down yet. Like they're managing to keep live going.
Travis Kelsey live ops event.
Go. We got some brand coming in to grow a garden.
Now you know we're cooking. It's real, baby. That's a good influencer, but but it feels like totally out of the
vend diagram of of a Roblox player. Travis Kelce
maybe
uh football player, podcast, personality, Taylor Swift, boyfriend.
I mean,
like he's an influencer now. And I think that's a whole other topic I want to do soon is I I saw this data point that Gen Z and below are more influenced by influencers and content creators than actors and celebrities. So if you're a marketer, like stop wasting your time on LeBron James and go find, you know, the next like creator who these kids care about. Like even on this WWE documentary on Netflix, which was amazing, it was the first time they ever like tell you

how wrestling works. They had a creator enter the Royal Rumble, which was one of their like flagship events. Speed,
poor guy like broke his leg or something. But
got crushed.
But like, spoiler alert,
something amazing, fascinating is they did this whole storyline. They didn't even have the cameras on it because they knew that the fans outside of the arena were going to film it and post it online to keep things going. Like we do not understand how much the influencer and creator landscape is really generating more news and action than like our traditional. Like it's just so fascinating how it's changing. Okay, see you guys next week.
See you next week. Later. [Music]