Roblox marketplace competition over how ads are purchased led at least three brands to reconsider their spend

Brands looking to reach Roblox users in 2025 are finding themselves inundated with competing pitches from Roblox over how to best advertise on the platform — and some are deciding to spend their marketing dollars elsewhere — or temporarily pause spend — as a result of the confusion.

Three executives at Roblox studios — the metaverse platform’s version of influencer marketing agencies, which help design branded experiences or integrate brands into pre-existing experiences — told Digiday that confusion over the platform’s competing ad visions in 2025 had caused a brand they were negotiating with to decide not to enter Roblox, though all three declined to name the specific brands to avoid damaging potential deals, and two requested anonymity to preserve business relationships.

At the moment, Roblox’s advertising ecosystem contains a multitude of stakeholders with differing priorities and ideal outcomes. There are the creators, who simply want to make as much money as they can by working with brands — which often means convincing an advertiser to focus its marketing budget on integrating into a single, popular experience. Then there are the studios, which want advertisers to pay them to manage more widely distributed campaigns that integrate brands across multiple experiences. And then there’s Roblox itself, which wants to funnel brands’ marketing budgets into its own ad products, such as Portals and video ads.

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