Roblox is starting to take programmatic advertising more seriously

A Roblox spokesperson told Digiday that the company continues to fine-tune its programmatic offering based on customer feedback, and that the hires are intended to support Roblox’s advertising team, “including partnerships, product and technology – both to build ad offerings, tools and partnerships, as well as to innovate in the new immersive media space.”

Roblox has dipped its toes into the advertising world over the past year, and this kind of recruiting activity suggests the platform plans to reach further levels in 2025. Roblox highlights its user base in these job descriptions, touting a daily audience of “tens of millions” and a “mission to connect a billion people with optimism and kindness.” The company’s daily user count reached nearly 80 million in June 2024.

The listing for the software engineer role, for example, makes no effort to downplay the scope of Roblox’s advertising dreams, as well as the responsibilities that come with them, including “create robust and scalable backend services, process large amounts of data, and run a real-time advertising decision server to develop and expand Roblox’s advertising business.”

Another clear sign that Roblox has big plans for programmatic is the recent changes to its partner program. After a period of testing and learning, Roblox recently revised the program to shift responsibility for selling its in-game advertising inventory from developer partners to programmatic vendors like PubMatic.

When it launched in 2023, the Roblox Partner Program included a commission system to encourage participants to sell Roblox ads directly to their customers. Despite this incentive, however, most developers in the Roblox Partner Program chose to focus on the more lucrative business of building custom virtual worlds over the past year. Brands will often spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop a custom Roblox world, while ad revenue comes in more incrementally and in smaller amounts.

Over the past year, Roblox has expected Partner Program participants to educate their customers about the benefits of both custom worlds and in-game advertising in Roblox. Over the past year, however, partners have largely prioritized the former due to its higher profits, leaving some of their clients relatively unaware of the possibility of in-game advertising.

“What they didn’t really have was that infrastructure to connect Roblox to SSPs, DSPs and so on,” said Nina Mackie, co-founder of agency WeGame2. “As an advertiser, you have to go directly to Roblox, and I think that can be quite intimidating for a lot of brands.”

Alternative methods are coming. At Roblox’s annual developer conference earlier this month, the company announced changes to the program aimed at helping brands feel more comfortable spending their marketing budgets on Roblox, such as a badge system that will more clearly delineate the specific skills and focus of each business that is enrolled in the partner program.

“There was a lot of ambiguity before, both for the companies within the Partner Program and also for everyone else outside,” says Marcus Holmström, CEO of Roblox development studio and Partner Program member The Gang. “What does it really mean that you are in the partner program, compared to working with someone else? It is something they have addressed now.”

Partner program members will not sell programmatic media on Roblox, and brands and agencies currently need to work directly with Roblox and PubMatic for programmatic media buys, a Roblox spokesperson said. However, Partner Program members can run other types of media outside of programmatic via the Roblox Ads Manager tool.

Before Roblox launched immersive ads in November 2023, almost all marketer spending went to game studios building branded worlds, not the platform itself. Just under a year later, much of the brands’ spending still goes to the studios, although a Roblox spokesperson declined to share specific numbers. Programmatic ads represent an important revenue stream for Roblox because they direct brands’ marketing dollars directly to the platform, rather than to an intermediary or third-party vendor operating within the Roblox ecosystem.

Earlier this year, Roblox partnered with PubMatic to begin offering programmatic video ads on the supply-side platform. For now, PubMatic remains the only ad tech platform to maintain an official relationship with Roblox — but the partnership isn’t exclusive, and some observers believe it’s only a matter of time until other SSPs and DSPs take advantage of the opportunity. Other platforms, such as Netflix and Disney, have similarly expanded their programmatic operations after reaching a certain scale to allow advertisers to effectively access their growing inventory.

“We’re excited to pioneer this new type of advertising experience with Roblox and help establish industry standards around 3D media devices,” said PubMatic chief revenue officer for the Americas Kyle Dozeman, adding that the company “see[s] looking forward to scaling Roblox’s programmatic video offering with the demand coming from future DSP partners.”

The writing is on the wall. Historically, when a platform makes a deal with an ad tech vendor, it means more such deals are likely on the horizon. For example, after Disney announced an expansion of its programmatic business in October 2023, the company finally partnered with Google’s DV 360 and The Trade Desk earlier this year to launch an ad exchange. Based on past trends, it wouldn’t be a surprise if Roblox followed up on its ad sales deal with one of the biggest SSPs by signing a deal – or deals – with the biggest DSPs to buy those ads.

“Competition is going to be pretty fierce for Roblox inventory, and I think we’ll see a further rollout of Roblox programmatic ads to other SSPs, and eventually DSPs, helping to incorporate 3D game formats like billboards and video in existing media buying platforms,” ​​said Nina Mackie, co-founder of the agency WeGame2. “I think most of the SSPs will seek some kind of integration with Roblox, and maybe even the agency holdcos. I think the demand is there and infrastructure is the only small obstacle right now.”

Partner program members, many of whom met with Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki at RDC directly, told Digiday that the platform had not yet confirmed if or when DSPs would open up Roblox inventory. However, they agreed that the entry of DSPs and additional SSPs may help overload brands’ spending on the platform.

“If they have something that’s easy to leverage from those who are buying ads today on other platforms, then of course that’s going to be a huge opportunity for those companies, and I would really think they’re looking at it.” said Holmström.