SuperAwesome this week announced it has been named by Roblox as its sole third-party commercial and technology partner for contextual advertising directed at users under 13, a move that gives the kidtech company exclusive access to one of the largest youth audiences on the internet.

A new commercial structure for youth advertising on Roblox

The partnership, announced June 4, 2026 from New York and London, appoints SuperAwesome as the only external vendor authorized to sell and manage Roblox advertising inventory for the under-13 segment worldwide. The appointment extends SuperAwesome's existing advertising technology into Roblox's platform, creating a single compliance-focused route for brands wanting to reach younger users on the gaming platform.

According to SuperAwesome, the agreement covers immersive formats including video billboards, branded portals, homepage ads, and sponsored tiles. All formats will be compliant with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) and consistent with broader industry best practices. The scope is global, with one notable carve-out: Roblox itself will retain direct sales of under-13 inventory to selected strategic partners in North America.

Roblox reported 144.5 million daily active users at the time of the announcement. The platform also generates 2.9 billion daily views of Roblox-related content on YouTube and TikTok, according to SuperAwesome. Those figures position it as one of the dominant surfaces for reaching Gen Alpha - a cohort broadly defined as children born from 2010 onward - and Gen Z audiences together.

What the sole vendor structure means in practice

The decision to appoint a single third-party vendor rather than operating an open marketplace for under-13 inventory reflects the compliance complexity involved. Advertising to children under 13 in the United States operates under COPPA, which restricts data collection, prohibits interest-based advertising without verifiable parental consent, and requires operators to implement specific technical safeguards. The rules tightened significantly when amended COPPA regulations took effect on June 23, 2025, introducing separate consent requirements for third-party data sharing and new transparency disclosures that directly affect how advertising can function in children-directed environments.

SuperAwesome's approach to that problem is contextual rather than behavioral. The company operates a content classification platform called Awesome Intelligence, which it describes as the backbone of the global launch. The platform generates youth-specific insight and classification data without relying on persistent user identifiers or behavioral tracking. Brands use that data to match their budgets to content categories and creator types rather than individual user profiles - a method that sidesteps the data collection restrictions that make standard programmatic techniques non-compliant in under-13 contexts.

The scale of the content challenge on Roblox makes some form of automated classification essentially unavoidable. According to SuperAwesome, approximately 15,000 new games are uploaded to the platform every day. Without a classification layer, advertisers face the fragmentation problem of a creator-centric environment where no centralized content review exists, and where the range of themes, tones, and audience ages across games varies enormously.

Roblox Kids and Select modes

The partnership is specifically designed to cover advertising across Roblox Kids and Select modes - the product configurations Roblox introduced as part of its broader safety restructuring over the past year. Those modes limit the experiences accessible to younger users and apply stricter content filters. Advertising within those modes had remained largely undeveloped before this agreement, because the brand-safety and compliance requirements for under-13 inventory are structurally different from those governing the general Roblox audience.

Roblox had already been expanding its advertising infrastructure significantly for older audiences. The platform opened video ads to all brands in May 2024, partnered with PubMatic for programmatic video advertising in April 2024, and expanded its Google advertising partnership with rewarded video in August 2025. In January 2026, Magnite secured exclusive global rights to monetize Roblox's rewarded video inventory, establishing the supply-side platform as the sole programmatic provider for mobile in-app video across 151 million daily active users at the time.

The SuperAwesome appointment fills the remaining gap in that commercial architecture - the under-13 segment - which had remained unaddressed by those earlier partnerships. All of the Magnite, PubMatic, and Google arrangements are restricted to users aged 13 and above.

The Blox Aware training program

Beyond the commercial arrangement, Roblox and SuperAwesome are jointly launching a training program called Blox Aware. The program is aimed at brands entering immersive gaming advertising for the first time and will provide a briefing on platform-specific advertising standards and safety protocols. It will also include best practices for producing content that is both effective and appropriate for younger audiences within Roblox.

That kind of preparation program reflects a real gap in advertiser knowledge. Roblox's creator-built environment differs materially from conventional display or social video advertising. Formats like branded portals and video billboards sit inside three-dimensional game worlds rather than alongside editorial content, which creates different expectations around brand-environment fit, rendering behavior across devices, and what constitutes suitable creative for a game populated by children. The Blox Aware program represents SuperAwesome's attempt to reduce that friction before brands commit budgets and create materials that may not translate well to the platform.

Format availability across devices

According to SuperAwesome, advertising will be supported across all available formats on mobile, PC, console, and VR. That breadth matters because Roblox's audience is not concentrated on a single surface. Mobile accounts for a significant share of play sessions, particularly among younger users, but the platform has a meaningful presence on PC and maintains VR compatibility. Running consistent, compliant campaigns across all of those simultaneously requires a technical infrastructure that handles rendering and delivery differently across each - a complexity that a dedicated kidtech partner is better positioned to manage than a general-purpose DSP.

The four ad formats mentioned in the announcement - video billboards, branded portals, homepage ads, and sponsored tiles - each occupy different positions within the Roblox interface. Video billboards appear inside game experiences, functioning as in-world advertising surfaces. Branded portals are experience-level integrations that allow users to enter brand-created game environments. Homepage ads and sponsored tiles operate within the Roblox discovery interface rather than inside individual games, reaching users as they browse for experiences to join. Together they represent a range of placements that span both the awareness and engagement phases of a campaign.

Context: children's advertising on a platform under scrutiny

The announcement arrives at a moment when Roblox has faced sustained legal and regulatory pressure over child safety. Louisiana filed a lawsuit against Roblox in August 2025 alleging the platform fails to protect children from predatory behavior. Roblox responded to that pressure partly by accelerating its age verification rollout: from late Q4 2025, the platform began requiring users to complete facial age estimation checks to access chat functionality, and the mandatory verification process completed its global rollout in early January 2026. By January 31, 2026, 45% of daily active users had completed age verification.

That verification infrastructure has a direct relevance to advertising. Roblox's Q4 2025 shareholder letter, released February 5, 2026, disclosed that 27% of verified users are over 18 - a finding that changes the demographic picture for advertisers. The platform is simultaneously becoming more verifiable for adult-targeted advertising and, through the SuperAwesome deal, more structured for compliant under-13 advertising. The two dynamics reinforce each other: clearer audience segmentation makes the case for dedicated solutions at each end of the age range.

The FTC's February 25, 2026 COPPA policy statement added a layer of regulatory context by granting a conditional enforcement shield to platforms collecting children's data solely for age verification purposes - a specific protection for the infrastructure that Roblox and its advertising partners now depend on.

SuperAwesome's position and the CEO's statement

SuperAwesome was founded in 2013 and spent several years building an advertising network for children's digital media before being acquired by Epic Games in September 2020. The company was demerged from Epic through a management buyout in January 2024, returning to independent operation with new leadership. Kate O'Loughlin is the current CEO.

In the announcement, O'Loughlin said: "We believe in powering a better internet for the next generation wherever they are, and they've decisively chosen Roblox as their platform for entertainment, play, and building their fandoms. Together, we have the opportunity to help brands engage with kids and tweens responsibly and transparently, while funding high-quality content and supporting creators with improved ad revenue. We're proud to be selected as Roblox's trusted partner to deliver this through our leading intelligence products."

The statement captures the dual commercial logic of the arrangement: brands gain a compliant route to a large and engaged youth audience, while creators benefit from improved ad revenue that the kidtech infrastructure can now deliver in their games. On a platform where 15,000 new experiences are uploaded daily, creator monetization has historically been uneven; more structured advertising infrastructure could change that distribution.

SuperAwesome had previously added Wow in the World to its kids podcast ad network in May 2026, and WPP partnered with the company in June 2020 to guide brands on responsible engagement with younger audiences - a relationship that reflected how large holding companies were beginning to invest in specialist compliance expertise for this segment.

Why the marketing community is watching

For the programmatic advertising industry, the deal presents a structural question. The under-13 segment on major platforms has functioned as an advertising no-go zone for most standard buying workflows because the data signals that drive auction-based targeting are either prohibited or unreliable in that context. Contextual classification - matching inventory to content categories rather than user profiles - is the mechanism SuperAwesome is using to unlock that inventory in a compliant way. It is the same approach that has gained traction in cookieless targeting discussions across the broader programmatic ecosystem, applied here to a specific regulatory context.

The appointment of a sole vendor also signals something about where platform liability sits. By routing all third-party under-13 advertising through a single COPPA-specialist intermediary, Roblox can enforce consistent compliance standards without auditing multiple demand partners. That model may become a reference point for other platforms navigating similar audience compositions.

The Roblox platform reached 144 million daily active users in Q4 2025, growing 69% year-over-year. Hours engaged for the same quarter grew 88% year-over-year to 35 billion. That scale, combined with the demographic concentration of under-13 users, means the size of the newly accessible inventory is material - even if the contextual constraints limit the premium pricing that behavioral targeting might otherwise command.

Timeline

Summary

Who: SuperAwesome, a kidtech company specializing in compliant digital advertising for children and teens, and Roblox, the gaming platform with 144.5 million daily active users.

What: Roblox has appointed SuperAwesome as its sole third-party vendor for contextual advertising directed at users under 13 worldwide. The partnership covers immersive formats including video billboards, branded portals, homepage ads, and sponsored tiles, all delivered through SuperAwesome's Awesome Intelligence content classification platform. A joint training program called Blox Aware will prepare brands for advertising within Roblox's environment.

When: The partnership was announced on June 4, 2026.

Where: The appointment is global in scope. Roblox will continue direct sales of under-13 inventory to selected strategic partners in North America.

Why: The arrangement addresses the compliance gap created by COPPA and related regulations, which prohibit standard behavioral or interest-based advertising techniques for users under 13. SuperAwesome's contextual classification approach offers a compliant route to a large youth audience without relying on personal data collection. For Roblox, appointing a single specialist intermediary provides consistent compliance enforcement across all third-party demand. For brands, it provides a structured, verified path to advertising within one of the dominant platforms for Gen Alpha audiences.