iHeartMedia partners with State Farm to launch 'iHeartLand' in Roblox's metaverse

iHeartMedia and State Farm launched iHeartLand on Wednesday, which will feature gaming, live events, music, and more.

Video Transcript

- It's time for triple play. The three stocks we're watching in this final 30 minutes of trading. We've got Roblox, Twilio, and McDonald's on deck.

So starting us off with Roblox making more room in its metaverse for iHeartMedia. Now iHeartLand launched today. And will combine gaming, live events, entertainment, music, and talent in what they call a premium interactive experience. Now it includes a State Farm Neighborhood that has quests. You also have Intel's new House of Wonder to engage with users and artists.

Now players can run their own radio stations, and trade virtual goods for the in-game currency Roblox. Singers, Love and Charlie Puth, will be part of the 10 concerts and 10 podcasts out of that this year. But investors though still not as hot on this metaverse play. You heard from Cowen's Doug Cruz who rated Roblox underperform this week saying, quote "Technical solutions needed to create a true metaverse may not materialize within a 5 to 10 year horizon. The conceptually attractive features of the metaverse also appear to be at odds with the reality of an internet that has become dominated by a few centralized platforms."

Now he said that even if the metaverse did arrive sooner, the lack of proprietary content, the spending power of its mostly young users as well as IP issues are just some of the hurdles. Now these companies have a fear of missing out, which is probably why they're hopping on board. But it's hard to see a clear path forward when it comes to growth right now though. We know of course Roblox entering the ad market at the end of the year to really try and help with the slowing revenue that they're seeing right now.

- It will be interesting to see whether or not they have massive success in the ad market. I think there's lots of questions out there about whether or not or they will have to prove the value here in order to attract some of the bigger names and substantial revenue in that space. When we take a look at Roblox, it's been similar to what we've seen from so many of their competitors that we've been talking about here on the show over the last several months here. A slowdown in gaming. A lot of the growth pulled forward because of the pandemic.

People were inside their homes spending more time on gaming. So some of that growth that we were expecting to see certainly has not turned up. I don't think we can count Roblox out just yet. But the stock performance over the last couple of months leaving a lot to be desired. Year to date shares off 56%. So I don't know if this is going to be the key thing that gets more users to the platform. But we'll have to wait and see about that.