Roblox faces growing pains as marketers start to demand more ad transparency

“There’s baseline media integrations, where the media is served through their [Roblox’s] first-party ad server, and then you get data back from their first-party ad server, and then from an [experience] integration standpoint, all of the metrics you’re receiving are from the developers themselves,” said Jason Scorrano, CEO of the agency Gaming Attict. “There’s no third-party Nielsen or Comscore that is showing you what is happening.”

Advertising represents a small share of Roblox’s current revenue, but is a key revenue stream that the company is looking to expand as it builds toward profitability. Roblox has never publicly disclosed its annual ad revenue, but Roblox vp of global brand partnerships and advertising Stephanie Latham told AdExchanger that it was a “small contributor” in 2023. In 2024, Roblox’s annual revenue was $3.6 billion, according to its financial disclosures. In April, Morgan Stanley analysts issued a report predicting that Roblox’s ad revenue would reach $1.2 billion by 2026.

“Most of RBLX’s engagement is entirely unmonetized,” the analysts wrote, “and ads are a key tool to turn that deficit into a strength.”

Until now, advertisers have been content with Roblox metrics, but now marketers are starting to push back against signing on without third-party verification, according to the agency execs Digiday spoke to. 

Call them growing pains – the kind every platform faces when courting bigger ad budgets. As Roblox matures and seeks to attract bigger brand budgets, marketers are increasingly calling for the kinds of third-party measurement and verification tools that have become standard on more established digital platforms. 

“Other platforms went through similar headwinds in the early stages,” said an agency source specializing in Roblox experiences, who requested anonymity to preserve business relationships. ”The breakthroughs are when third-party measurement gets reliable and consistent, and then adopted. Roblox is close.”

Roblox is aware of advertisers’ desire for more proof points of the reach and impact of its ad offerings, and has taken steps to assuage their concerns through both internal data tests and a partnership with Nielsen announced in April. As of yet, however, the announced Nielsen measurement products have not yet been made available to advertisers. A Nielsen representative declined to elaborate on the timeline for the rollout of its Roblox measurement tools, or on advertisers’ current wariness of Roblox measurement, saying simply that “Nielsen is actively working with Roblox to make Nielsen measurement of Roblox’s ads available.” A Comscore representative was unable to share a comment prior to the publication of this article.

When reached for comment, a Roblox representative stressed that the company is committed to helping advertisers accurately measure the reach of their presences on Roblox, and that Roblox is actively working with data partners such as MediaScience, IAS and Kantar to determine the unique benefits of advertising inside three-dimensional, immersive environments.

“One of the things we really like working on with our publisher clients is what we’re referring to as third-party research, because then that allows Kantar to be the non-biased party in the room,” said Kantar chief media commercial lead Nicole Jones. “We’re not just reporting out on metrics that increase; we’ll report out on the whole set of metrics.”

The Roblox representative flagged the company’s partnership with Google to offer rewarded video ads, announced in April, as one example of a way the platform is building out its measurement capabilities. Advertisers that use Google to purchase these ads on Roblox can use Google’s dashboard to measure the ads’ performance.

“Agencies and brands tell us daily how excited they are about the potential of Roblox and how they see their key audiences, particularly Gen Z, rapidly shifting to immersive platforms like ours,” said Roblox global head of brand insights and measurement Allison McDuffee. “We are working with a range of top-tier partners, from Google to Kantar, Cint, DoubleVerify, IAS and Nielsen, to quickly expand and bring both standard measurement and innovative approaches to advertisers. We are committed to helping clients effectively measure the impact of showing up across ad surfaces on Roblox, including in immersive environments.”

In 2025, Roblox is becoming a regular part of some brands’ marketing mix. The total number of brands activating inside virtual worlds had increased from 558 to 828 year over year between 2023 and 2024, according to data platform GEEIQ’s 2025 State of Brands in Gaming and Virtual Worlds report, with 47 percent of those activations taking place inside Roblox. 

At the moment, though, media buyers are concerned that they are nearing a potential ceiling of advertisers who are interested in trying out Roblox without the backing of third-party measurement. Three agency executives, including Scorrano and Cynthia Miller, head of strategy at the agency eGen, told Digiday that although their pre-existing clients were satisfied with the results they were seeing from their Roblox ads, they were finding it increasingly challenging to convince new brands to come on board.

“It’s not 2022 or 2023 anymore — the days of ‘we’re going into Roblox because this is really cool, and my daughter loves “Catalog Avatar Creator”’ [are over],” Miller said. “So, maybe we’re seeing a bit of a stratification between the brands who really get it and the brands that are still on the precipice.”