Why brands are still showing up on Roblox
By Zofia Zwieglinska • December 18, 2025 •
Ivy Liu
Over the past year, Roblox has become harder for brands to ignore — not because it has resolved the challenges of digital commerce, but because of the scale at which younger consumers already use it. The platform now reaches 151 million daily active users who spend close to three hours a day inside its experiences, which will equate to more than 88 billion hours of engagement in 2025.
At the same time, Roblox is positioning itself as a place where retail behavior is increasingly visible in real time. According to the company’s 2025 Replay report released on December 16, users conduct more than 50 million searches on the platform per day, most of them discovery-led rather than tied to specific games — users are looking for broad themes or activities, such as “roleplay,” “horror” or “dance,” for example, especially since avatars were given “movement” capabilities. Users also update their avatars an average of 274 million times daily, reflecting how frequently identity, style and self-expression are tested on the platform. For Gen-Z users, those behaviors increasingly connect to physical shopping. According to the report, 84% say their real-world style is inspired by their avatar, and 88% use digital fashion to preview before buying physical clothing.
That growth has broadened the types of brands experimenting on the platform, though most remain in test-and-learn mode. “Our range now is so much greater than just fashion,” Stephanie Latham, vp of global brand partnerships at Roblox said, referring to the brands selling digital products on the platform. “You have retailers and auto companies, Sam’s Club giving people rotisserie chicken head-shaped and toilet paper-shaped avatars, and more traditional [apparel brands] like Adidas giving you custom soccer jerseys.”
For brands unwilling to invest in bespoke virtual worlds or digital product drops, Roblox is increasingly steering activity toward advertising. The platform’s primary ad format is rewarded video, which runs inside experiences where users are already spending time. Users opt in to watch a video ad in exchange for in-game rewards such as currency, power-ups or cosmetic enhancements. “Most of our ads run in-experience, which is where most of the users spend most of their time,” Latham said. “From a user perspective, we want to make sure it’s additive to their experience.”
That structure allows brands to repurpose existing creatives rather than develop Roblox-specific assets from scratch. are Certain high-traffic environments have become particularly relevant for this approach. Roblox’s most searched experiences this year included Brookhaven, Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot, with the first two supporting rewarded video ads. Last month, Universal Pictures appeared in Brookhaven during the “Wicked” film release to tap into an already highly active audience. Brookhaven, which mirrors everyday social environments like cities and neighborhoods, has also become a testing ground for physical retail concepts. “There are ways to really authentically integrate there, whether it’s a pop-up store or a billboard,” Latham said.
Beyond clothing and environments, movement has emerged as a significant driver of engagement. Emotes and avatar actions offered for Robux, have reshaped search behavior, pushing verbs like “dance” to the top of marketplace queries. Movement-based expression on Roblox has so far been led by entertainment and creator IP rather than retail brands. Artists including Lady Gaga and Charli XCX, along with viral creators like Skrilla, have introduced branded dance moves and choreography, turning movement into a form of fandom-driven self-expression. Retail brands have the technical ability to participate, but most are still watching how movement-led expression evolves before adopting it as a commerce tool.
As brand participation increases, safety has become a more explicit part of Roblox’s pitch. Over the past six months, the platform has rolled out facial age estimation to gate communication features, tightened age-based chat restrictions and expanded content maturity labels across experiences. Roblox has also layered additional AI and human moderation across text and voice, while giving parents more granular controls over who their children can interact with, what content they can access and how much time they spend on the platform. The company has become more vocal about moderation as public and regulatory attention intensifies and advertisers ask for clearer guardrails.
For Roblox, the opportunity it offers brands is less about a single retail solution and more about providing cultural signals. By tracking search spikes and engagement on Roblox around moments like “67” and “K Pop Demon Hunters,” the platform gives brands an early read on which memes, fandoms and aesthetics are gaining traction among Gen Z users. Those insights are shared with brand and agency partners through periodic reports, direct briefings and performance data tied to media placements. Those insights are then increasingly used to inform where brands place media, how they shape creatives and which cultural moments they choose to engage with next. “Roblox has clearly established itself as the most dynamic test market out there,” Latham said. “You have a frontline view of where culture is going.” Whether those signals consistently translate into physical retail outcomes varies by brand and category, but the platform’s scale is forcing more retailers to pay attention.
“We want to help brands drive business impact,” Latham said, “but we want to do it in a way that’s not intrusive to our users and is additive to our creators.”
