In 2024, Roblox’s programmatic advertising efforts are picking up speed after a slow start. The company is expanding its advertising division by hiring for key positions, including roles such as director of engineering, principal software engineer, and principal product manager.
These positions, with salaries ranging from $200,000 to $440,000, reflect Roblox’s focus on strengthening its advertising infrastructure. The new hires will support the company’s efforts to enhance its ad offerings, tools, and partnerships, especially within the growing immersive media space.
Having experimented with advertising over the past year, Roblox is now preparing for a larger-scale push in 2025. The platform’s large and active user base, which reached nearly 80 million daily users in mid-2024, provides a compelling case for advertisers.
Roblox is looking to scale its programmatic business, with job listings emphasizing the need for engineers to develop scalable systems and real-time ad decision-making tools. The company is focusing on improving its ad technology, signaling that its ambitions for programmatic advertising are becoming more concrete.
Roblox Expands Programmatic Advertising Efforts with Key Hires and New Partnerships in 2024
One of the key shifts in Roblox’s advertising strategy is a change to its Partner Program. Initially, the program allowed developers to sell in-game ads directly to clients, but many developers found it more profitable to focus on building custom-branded worlds instead.
As a result, Roblox has shifted the responsibility for selling in-game ads to programmatic vendors such as PubMatic. This change is designed to simplify the process for advertisers, enabling them to buy ad inventory directly from Roblox, rather than dealing with individual developers or third-party vendors.
To make its ad ecosystem more accessible to brands, Roblox has introduced new tools and features. One such feature is a badging system that highlights the specific capabilities of companies within the Partner Program.
While these partners won’t be directly handling programmatic ads, they will still be able to use Roblox’s Ads Manager to manage other types of media. These updates aim to make the advertising process clearer for brands, moving beyond custom virtual worlds and making in-game ads a more attractive option.
The partnership between Roblox and PubMatic, which offers programmatic video ads, is an important milestone in Roblox’s advertising strategy. PubMatic is currently the only programmatic platform integrated with Roblox, but this is expected to change as more platforms are likely to follow.
Similar to other major players like Netflix and Disney, Roblox’s partnership with PubMatic could pave the way for future collaborations with other supply-side and demand-side platforms. As more advertising platforms integrate with Roblox, the competition for ad space will likely increase, which could lead to significant growth in the company’s programmatic ad revenue.
