Roblox Wants a Line in Every Media Plan. Pre-Roll Ads are Its Latest Argument.
Roblox is a phenomenon. More than 130 million people log into the game every day, spending an average of two and a half hours inside its immersive worlds. For advertisers chasing Gen Z and Gen Alpha, that kind of engagement is hard to find anywhere else. The challenge has always been proving that the time spent translates into business results.
Roblox is betting that programmatic video, standardized measurement, and familiar buying rails can finally move gaming from experimental line item to core media plan. The platform has spent the past two years building out the infrastructure agencies need to justify the spend in a C-suite meeting.
“If they can’t measure it, they’re not going to continue to spend,” said Mike Schoelch, head of agency partnerships at Roblox, in this video interview with Beet.TV at IAB PlayFronts. “We’ve been really focused on making sure that we have those tools so it can be just like any other digital media platform.”
A hard-to-reach audience that’s already leaned in
Roblox’s pitch to buyers centers on access. The platform’s users skew young, but the audience is more segmented than outsiders assume. Roblox can break out under-13s, teens, and adults as separate cohorts for targeting, and all users are logged in, giving advertisers deterministic reach rather than probabilistic guesswork.
“They’re really hard to reach,” Schoelch said of Roblox’s core users. “They’re not across a lot of other digital media properties. And what we do is we provide access into that audience because they’re spending over two and a half hours a day on Roblox.”
The engagement numbers are striking. Roblox said in January that its rewarded video format delivers completion rates above 90 percent and viewability above 95 percent across more than 400 experiences and 1,000 brands. Those metrics rival or exceed benchmarks for social and CTV video.
Programmatic buying removes friction
For years, gaming advertising required custom builds, one-off branded worlds, or direct deals that did not fit neatly into media plans. Roblox has methodically dismantled those barriers. The company announced its partnership with Google at PlayFronts in April 2025 to make rewarded video inventory available programmatically, and it has since added Amazon DSP, Liftoff, Index Exchange, Magnite, and PubMatic to the mix.
“The inventory is available on the open exchange, the inventory is available through deal IDs,” Schoelch said. “The whole idea is we want to make it easy for brands to activate. We want to make it scalable, we want to make it repeatable, and we want to make it measurable.”
Last week at RDC, Roblox announced it would begin testing pre-roll video ads – short, skippable spots that run while a game loads. The format requires no integration from creators and is designed to feel native to the mobile-first experience. It is another step toward making Roblox inventory look and buy like standard digital video.
Measurement is the unlock
Agencies are not short on places to spend money. What they need is proof that a new channel delivers outcomes comparable to established ones. Roblox has invested heavily in measurement partnerships that let brands track brand lift, foot traffic, and return on ad spend alongside their other digital buys.
“Can they be able to go into a C-suite meeting and actually validate the fact that we were able to drive those outcomes?” Schoelch said. “We’ve done a lot of work, especially over the last two years, to be able to open up new opportunities for brands to be able to show ROI, to be able to show brand lift, to show foot traffic.”
The broader market is moving in the same direction. The IAB’s Gaming Measurement Framework, released in 2025, aims to standardize how advertisers evaluate display, video, audio, and custom gaming ad formats. WPP Media’s midyear forecast projects global gaming advertising will grow 33 percent in 2026 to $13.3 billion, though that still represents only about 1.1 percent of total ad spend.
The gap between audience scale and budget share is exactly the opportunity Roblox is chasing.
Roblox is a phenomenon. More than 130 million people log into the game every day, spending an average of two and a half hours inside its immersive worlds. For advertisers chasing Gen Z and Gen Alpha, that kind of engagement is hard to find anywhere else. The challenge has always been proving that the time spent translates into business results.
Roblox is betting that programmatic video, standardized measurement, and familiar buying rails can finally move gaming from experimental line item to core media plan. The platform has spent the past two years building out the infrastructure agencies need to justify the spend in a C-suite meeting.
“If they can’t measure it, they’re not going to continue to spend,” said Mike Schoelch, head of agency partnerships at Roblox, in this video interview with Beet.TV at IAB PlayFronts. “We’ve been really focused on making sure that we have those tools so it can be just like any other digital media platform.”
A hard-to-reach audience that’s already leaned in
Roblox’s pitch to buyers centers on access. The platform’s users skew young, but the audience is more segmented than outsiders assume. Roblox can break out under-13s, teens, and adults as separate cohorts for targeting, and all users are logged in, giving advertisers deterministic reach rather than probabilistic guesswork.
“They’re really hard to reach,” Schoelch said of Roblox’s core users. “They’re not across a lot of other digital media properties. And what we do is we provide access into that audience because they’re spending over two and a half hours a day on Roblox.”
The engagement numbers are striking. Roblox said in January that its rewarded video format delivers completion rates above 90 percent and viewability above 95 percent across more than 400 experiences and 1,000 brands. Those metrics rival or exceed benchmarks for social and CTV video.
Programmatic buying removes friction
For years, gaming advertising required custom builds, one-off branded worlds, or direct deals that did not fit neatly into media plans. Roblox has methodically dismantled those barriers. The company announced its partnership with Google at PlayFronts in April 2025 to make rewarded video inventory available programmatically, and it has since added Amazon DSP, Liftoff, Index Exchange, Magnite, and PubMatic to the mix.
“The inventory is available on the open exchange, the inventory is available through deal IDs,” Schoelch said. “The whole idea is we want to make it easy for brands to activate. We want to make it scalable, we want to make it repeatable, and we want to make it measurable.”
Last week at RDC, Roblox announced it would begin testing pre-roll video ads – short, skippable spots that run while a game loads. The format requires no integration from creators and is designed to feel native to the mobile-first experience. It is another step toward making Roblox inventory look and buy like standard digital video.
Measurement is the unlock
Agencies are not short on places to spend money. What they need is proof that a new channel delivers outcomes comparable to established ones. Roblox has invested heavily in measurement partnerships that let brands track brand lift, foot traffic, and return on ad spend alongside their other digital buys.
“Can they be able to go into a C-suite meeting and actually validate the fact that we were able to drive those outcomes?” Schoelch said. “We’ve done a lot of work, especially over the last two years, to be able to open up new opportunities for brands to be able to show ROI, to be able to show brand lift, to show foot traffic.”
The broader market is moving in the same direction. The IAB’s Gaming Measurement Framework, released in 2025, aims to standardize how advertisers evaluate display, video, audio, and custom gaming ad formats. WPP Media’s midyear forecast projects global gaming advertising will grow 33 percent in 2026 to $13.3 billion, though that still represents only about 1.1 percent of total ad spend.
The gap between audience scale and budget share is exactly the opportunity Roblox is chasing.
