Discord is rolling out new ad products in a bid to expand the scale and measurement capabilities of its network.
Today, Sept. 29, Discord announced two significant updates to its ad offering: the Discord Ads Manager and an updated Video Quests product. The former is Discord’s first campaign measurement platform, creating a streamlined workflow for brands and marketers who want to forecast, set up, and measure the impact of their ads on Discord. The latter is a new, mobile-first video ad format, with players incentivized to click and watch video ads for 15 seconds to receive rewards.
“It’s a performance media format built for fast, repeatable interactions and vertical scroll,” said Discord global vice president of advertising Adam Bauer in an interview with GamesBeat. “Essentially, it still functions very similarly to the first version of Video Quests, in the sense that once you see it, you tap on it, watch, and then you earn orbs or virtual currency.”
Discord’s new Video Quests product is replacing the older version of Video Quests rolled out by the platform last year, which was largely a browser-based format, rather than mobile-first. The older version of Video Quests has been renamed Video Quests Reserve, with a Discord representative describing the evolved format as a “premium reservation-based offering for high-impact brand moments, with delivery and rewards tied to full video completion.” The Video Quests Reserve product will not be part of the Discord Ads Manager and will only be available for direct purchase from Discord, per Bauer.
Discord plans to initially roll out both its Ads Manager and updated Video Quests as beta products available to a “select group of advertisers” later this year, according to a company representative, with plans to make the tools available for self-serve use in early 2027. The goal of the launch is to expand the pool of advertisers using Discord by opening the platform up to smaller brands, marketers, and game studios, including those that did not previously have a direct sales relationship with Discord.
“This is a milestone of our business — getting Discord to be a full-funnel ad engagement platform, regardless of what stage or what journey you’re at if you’re a brand marketer, whether it be in upper-funnel brand awareness, more mid-funnel considerations, or your lower-funnel direct-response-type buys,” Bauer said.
The Discord Ad Manager uses auction-based delivery and pricing for its inventory, rather than a fixed cost-per-mille price. Advertisers purchase ads through objective-based bidding, with marketers able to adjust their bids based on delivery and performance. After campaigns go live, the platform enables advertisers to measure their performance in real time using both first-party data and third-party tools and platforms like Appsquire, Singular, and Adjust, per Bauer.
Today’s product launch represents the latest step in Discord’s ongoing push into ads, which kicked off with the platforms’ introduction of its Quests format in April 2024. Last month, Discord launched its new Play Quest+ ad format, which allows advertisers to offer players rewards for completing certain in-game actions, like finishing a match or completing a tutorial.
In January 2026, Discord confidentially filed plans for an initial public offering, although it has not yet announced any official plans or date for this move. For any company looking to monetize the engagement and attention of its audience, advertising represents a logical and often necessary lever to pull — and the pressure to do so has only been increased by the chatter around Discord’s impending IPO.
“Moving forward, we’re going to continue to invest in formats and features across all of those parts, whether you’re in an upper-funnel brand-awareness lifecycle or you’re at the very bottom and you’re trying to actually get people to install your app or drive purchases on your platform,” Bauer said. “So, just making Discord more accessible to businesses of any size, and giving them more ways to turn engagement into results.”