Guest
Stephanie Latham
VP Global Brand Partnerships & Advertising, Roblox
Two decades across agency, Facebook, Meta and now Roblox, building a brand advertising business on a platform where people participate rather than watch.
About
Stephanie Latham is VP Global Brand Partnerships and Advertising at Roblox, where she built and now leads the business that brings brands onto a platform with over 120 million daily users who participate for close to three hours a day. She is known for arguing that the strongest brand work on Roblox is additive to play, and for pushing the industry towards measurement that can value immersive, participatory behaviour.
Latham came up through agency before spending 12 years at Facebook and Meta, living through the social evolution and watching brands learn to build teams and buy in a new way. She describes having lived a few lives on that journey, from the early days when not every brand, CMO or agency had a social team, to the point where measurable, standardised buying became the norm.
She joined Roblox to build a brand partnerships and advertising business that did not previously exist inside the company, sitting alongside what she calls a very profitable core business. By her account the first 18 months were about people and organisation rather than product, learning from peers at companies such as Uber who had built new businesses inside established ones. Her remit now spans standard ad products, a registry and vetting program for the creator ecosystem, and the work of defining immersive measurement with bodies like the IAB.
Career22 years
- 2023 to now Roblox Vice President Global Brand Partnerships & Advertising
- 2021 to 2023 Meta Vice President | Global Advertising Partnerships | Entertainment, Tech & Telco
- 2020 to 2021 Meta Director | Advertising Partnerships | Technology, Mobility & Connectivity
- 2019 to 2020 Meta Director | Advertising Partnerships | Technology
Show earlier roles: Meta, The Barbarian Group, Ogilvy
- 2013 to 2019 Meta Director | Advertising Partnerships | Automotive
- 2011 to 2013 Meta Director | Account Management | Retail, Financial Services, Restaurants
- 2007 to 2011 The Barbarian Group Executive Director Account Services
- 2004 to 2007 Ogilvy Account Supervisor
How Stephanie thinks3 convictions
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Participation over passive viewing
Latham rejects the old picture of a gamer alone in a basement as a narrow definition of what Roblox is. She argues the platform's power is that people build, compete and create together, for hours, with friends. For brands, that means the task is to add to the play rather than interrupt it.
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Creators as strategic partners
Latham treats creators and developers as consultants who understand their own communities better than any brand can. The best work, she says, comes from brands that listen and lean in, while brands that arrive certain they know best keep the relationship transactional. Authenticity matters so much to these generations that the creators are the ones who can protect it.
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Healthy paranoia in hiring
Latham credits Andrew Robertson of BBDO for the idea, and has carried it since. She wants people who care enough to make sure the team runs the best meeting, ships the best product and asks the right questions, without it tipping into something crippling. For her, that quiet edge is a positive force on a team building something new.