Image: Discord
Discord’s foray into online ads starts this week through ‘Sponsored ‘Quests’.
After years of staying ad-free, Discord is going to start showing advertisements to you and your friends very soon. According to the Wall Street Journal, the social platform is planning to roll out ads in the form of ‘Sponsored Quests’ this week. These Quests will offer rewards to users who stream certain games for their friends while checking off in-game tasks.
These ads appear to only be minimally intrusive for now, and will be displayed at the bottom left of the app to market various videogames.
Discord’s new ads will start appearing to users this week
Discord might have a paid subscription that lets users unlock bonus features on its app, but it looks like that isn’t enough monetisation to whet the company's appetite moving forward. A Wall Street Journal report has claimed that Discord’s new Sponsored Quests ads, which will market videogames through in-app streams, will land on the platform sometime this week.
Here’s how these Sponsored Quests will work: Discord will offer rewards for anyone who streams specific games on the app as long as at least one of their friends is watching. Streamers will have to complete certain in-game tasks for the rewards, thereby marketing these games on the developers’ behalf. Friends watching these streams will also get to tick off their own Sponsored Quests for more rewards.
Discord is reportedly hiring more than a dozen staff to assist in this new push for in-app ads, with new hires tasked with programming these advertisements into the app and selling them to interested game publishers or developers. If you’re worried that these ads are going to actively hinder your streams, however, you will be able to turn them off by heading into Discord’s settings - though this might later turn out to be another Discord Nitro-exclusive feature.
This is bound to be a controversial move for a platform known for staying ad-free, and thriving on communities of gamers who are soon to find themselves the target of these Sponsored Quests. Will people revolt against having their friendships exploited just for Discord to make a quick buck off their streams? We’ll have to wait and see.