Discord lures users to click on ads by offering them new Orbs currency

Sellis also announced that Discord is working with brand measurement firm Kantar to help advertisers track ad success. With Kantar technology, advertisers can measure things like “awareness, recall, and intent,” Sellis said. The partnership further underscores Discord’s growing reliance on advertising revenue.

“Our partnership with Discord is helping marketers better understand Discord as an advertising platform for new generations,” Nicole Jones, Kantar’s chief commercial lead, said on Discord’s blog.

Rethinking ads

Discord also announced this week that it will soon sell Play Quests to more advertisers. The announcement follows the company’s introduction of video ads to the Discord mobile app in June. Video Quests, as they’re called, allow advertisers to show trailers, announcements, and other types of content.

Overall, Discord’s new ad-friendly approach to business is very different than its previous strategy, which kept Discord ad-free from its 2015 launch until last year. Because the company is expected to go public soon, its leaders have determined that it’s no longer sufficient to rely completely on premium add-ons and subscriptions. Discord isn’t profitable, forcing the firm to reconsider its use of ads, which cofounder and CEO Jason Citron felt were too intrusive as recently as 2021.

Currently, Discord’s ads are limited to clickable sidebars within the platform and offer direct benefits to users. Introducing ads can be a slippery slope, though, especially for social media companies that prioritize ad revenue to please investors. On the other hand, another social media company, Reddit, has seen success by boosting its ad business. Reddit went public in March 2024 and became profitable in October 2024 after reporting a 60 percent year-over-year increase in ad revenue. Reddit has hinted at plans to introduce new and more types of ads, and we can expect Discord to consider the same after its IPO, which a March Bloomberg report suggested could happen as soon as this year.