Discord announces mobile ad format to broaden game ad opportunities

Discord announced plans to expand its successful Video Quests advertising format to mobile devices. This strategic move marks the company’s first mobile ad offering, significantly broadening reach for advertisers while maintaining Discord’s commitment to user-first, reward-focused advertising experiences.

The initial pilot for Video Quests on Mobile will launch in June 2025, offering advertisers a prime opportunity to showcase trailers, make impactful announcements, and highlight premium content to Discord’s player community.

Other media have reported that Discord is in talks to go public and so it makes sense that the company is looking for ways to improve monetization. Earlier this week at the Game Developers Conference, Discord announced its social SDK to improve engagement with users.

“Expanding our advertising platform to mobile is an obvious, natural evolution in our strategy. Our mission is to create the most authentic, player-centric advertising platform in the galaxy. This expansion will provide brand partners access to Discord’s highly engaged, cross-platform mobile audience — and create new opportunities for businesses to connect with our community in meaningful, and performant, ways,” said Peter Sellis, senior vice president for product at Discord, in a statement.

Launched just one year ago, Discord’s advertising business initially focused on driving game discovery with its rewarded ad format, Quests. The offering has since expanded to include Video Quests, broadening its advertiser audience beyond the gaming industry to Media and Entertainment. This first iteration of Video Quests on Mobile focuses on brand awareness goals, delivering a premium user experience with a full-screen format, while maintaining the opt-in and rewarded nature of the Quests.

“We went broad and focused on being more of a community platform,” said Jason Citron, CEO of Discord, in an interview with GamesBeat. “And what we learned was really that the people who really love and were passionate about our products were were the people who play games and they use Discord for other things. But when we built and shipped features that made it easier better to play games or hang out with your friends before doing and after playing games, it really resonated with folks.”

Citron added, “So starting early last year, we decided to double back down on that core value prop. And as part of that, we thought about not just the player side of it, but also the industry side. How can we help developers? So that’s what led us to launch Quest last year.”

Discord is also going to roll out a new capability for Quest at GDC so devs can run video Quests on mobile for pre-release games or pre-release seasonal updates, whereas previously, there was only been on desktop and then the social SDK as well, Citron said.

“We started working on it last year and went into very early access with two games, and now we’re ready to have a big coming out party for it,” Citron said.

Discord’s advertising platform features its signature premium rewarded Quests format, which now comes in two varieties:
● Video Quests: Focused on driving awareness, this format is ideal for trailers, new season announcements, downloadable content (DLC) drops, and other video content. The upcoming expansion of Video Quests to mobile will help advertisers expand their campaign reach, open the door to new advertising opportunities like mobile games, and more.

● Play Quests: Designed to drive gameplay, these quests require users to play or stream a game to
unlock rewards, creating an authentic connection between players and the games they love. Since its launch in 2024, Quests have powered successful advertising campaigns with some of the most popular and recognizable gaming, media, and entertainment franchises, including Diablo, Street Fighter, Max’s
Dune: Prophecy, World of Warcraft, Genshin Impact, and more.

Discord said MiHoYo used Quests to energize their audience around a major update that introduced a new character, world, and storyline events in Genshin Impact. They launched a Play Quest with a high-value in-game reward. The campaign attracted millions of participants and generated an 80% increase in
playtime during the week when the Quest ran.

Max aimed to build excitement and drive awareness for its highly anticipated TV series Dune: Prophecy, engaging audiences and creating buzz ahead of the premiere. Max partnered with Discord to launch the first-ever Video Quest, featuring a 2-minute 38-second trailer that achieved an 85% completion rate.

● Nexon Games drove awareness and consideration for The First Descendant, their new MMO shooter,
during the Season 2 launch. Discord created a Video Quest featuring their trailer and offered an exclusive in-game reward. The campaign generated over 1 million video completions with 10% coming organically through players sharing the video with friends.

Discord is available everywhere its users play, including PC, mobile, and native integrations with Xbox and
PlayStation.

Companies interested in participating in the Video Quests on Mobile program are encouraged to contact
Discord for inclusion in the pilot opportunity.

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