Discord heightens ad focus by introducing video ads to mobile apps in June

Discord looks for more ways to make money ahead of expected IPO.

Discord’s mobile app will have video ads starting in June, the company announced today. The initial pilot for the video ads, which Discord calls Video Quests on Mobile, will offer advertisers the ability to “showcase trailers, make impactful announcements, and highlight premium content” to users, Discord said.

Discord was a proudly ad-free platform until March 2024, when it introduced ads to its desktop and console apps. Those ads offer Discord users rewards for PC games if they play certain games or get people to watch a stream of their gameplay through Discord. Discord followed up with Video Quests, which let developers show Discord users video ads, like trailers and announcements of new seasons and downloadable content. Discord users see prompts for both types of ads on the bottom-left side of their screen and can choose to expand or ignore them.

Discord users can also opt out of personalized promotions and “hide an in-app promotion for a specific Quest or game you’re not interested in,” Discord said.

In June, users of Discord’s mobile apps will see Video Quest advertisements on the bottom of the screen as depicted below:

First, the ad prompt appears.

Discord

 

This is what the prompt looks like expanded.

Discord

 

If users click "Accept Quest" on the expanded prompt, a video ad like this will play.

Discord

 

Users can then claim rewards...

Discord

 

...and be assured that they've received said rewards.

Discord

 

“Expanding our advertising platform to mobile is an obvious, natural evolution in our strategy," Peter Sellis, Discord’s product SVP, said in a statement accompanying today’s announcement. "Our mission is to create the most authentic, player-centric advertising platform in the galaxy."

Discord’s expansion into mobile ads brings the 10-year-old company deeper down the rabbit hole of online advertising. The company, which used to rely solely on subscriptions and premium add-ons for money, previously viewed the idea of ads on Discord as intrusive.

However, Discord reportedly isn’t profitable and is looking to go public soon. Earlier this month, The New York Times reported that Discord could file an initial public offering "as soon as this year," citing "two people familiar with the talks." Discord founder and CEO Jason Citron told Bloomberg last year that Discord would "probably" go public eventually.

As such, it's a critical time for Discord to create new forms of revenue, even if that means embracing something that Citron has previously acknowledged is unpopular. The situation is similar to that of another social media platform, Reddit. Reddit has increased its focus on ads since going public in March 2024 and finally reaching profitability in October 2024. The company's advertising revenue grew 60 percent year over year in 2024.

In its effort to continue pleasing investors, Reddit has hinted at bringing more ads to the platform. The need for ad dollars is also part of the reason Reddit changed its API pricing, killing most third-party apps that let users access Reddit outside of its native platforms, where Reddit sells ads. Reddit's growth and evolution illustrate how advertising can quickly become more central to a social platform and potentially frustrate users.

So far, Discord’s ads have seemed minimally intrusive. But the door separating Discord users and advertisers will creak open a little more in June.

Source

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