• by Colin Kirkland , April 1, 2024

For the first time in a decade, Discord, a social media platform known for livestreaming, has plans to begin showing advertisements on its free platform in order to boost revenue. The changes will take place over the course of the next week.

Due to a focus on gamers and gaming, Discord's first ads will be from video game companies and will grant users gifts for completing in-game tasks “while their friends watch,” said The Wall Street Journal.

The company has always firmly been against the use of ads on its site, with CEO Jason Citron repeatedly saying that Discord will not rely on ads like Facebook and other social media giants.

However, Discord is now planning to hire over a dozen ad salespeople to carry out this new initiative.

The ads will appear in the bottom left corner of users' screens and the targeting process will be based on a user's gameplay, age and location.

According to the WSJ, Discord users will have the option to go to their settings and turn off the ads, but it is unclear whether this will apply to all users or only to paying subscribers.

Discord has become a major social platform with 150 million monthly active users and 4 billion server conversation minutes daily.

Despite what CEO Citron has said about ads in the past, Discord has little choice but to follow in line with other leading tech platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Paramount+ who have recently implemented ad-supported tiers to increase revenue.

Earlier this month, a report by Bloomberg discussed Discord's ambition to become publicly listed on the stock market “at some point in the future,” according to Citron.