• by Colin Kirkland , March 20, 2025

  Discord is bringing video ads to mobile devices starting in June 2025, expanding its ad business while inviting users to earn rewards for “playing, streaming, or watching videos.

”Expanding our advertising platform to mobile is an obvious, natural evolution in our strategy,” said Discord Product Leader Peter Sellis.

In further developing its “player-centric advertising platform,” Sellis added that the company is attempting to create opportunities for businesses that help them connect with Discord users in “meaningful, performant ways.”

Last year, Discord launched Video Quests -- ads that allow users to earn rewards including avatar swag and in-game items by watching a video ad -- across PCs and consoles. Now, the Quest ads are coming to mobile.

The ads will appear as a “Quest bar” at the bottom of users' screens. Users can choose to dismiss the ad, but will gain points for opening the video and watching it full-screen.

Discord currently has over 200 million active users. According to Analyzify, the Discord mobile app was downloaded 23.7 million times globally in 2024, up from 23.4 million downloads in 2022.

The company's mobile app brought in $31 million in revenue last year, 66% of which came from the United States.

Initially designed as a communication platform for gamers to communicate and come together via voice, video and text channels in 2015, Discord is aiming to provide gaming brands with the ability to better showcase trailers for new games and downloadable content.

Over the past decade, Discord has pushed the concept of online micro-communities into the larger social media landscape, influencing Meta to implement various community-focused features across its family of apps, like WhatsApp, Facebook and Messenger.

Some Quests ask users to stream games to unlock rewards as a way for advertisers to target new players.

Over the past year, movie trailers and other video announcements have also become popular use cases for the new ad format.

In addition to Play Quests -- ads that reward players for completing in-game tasks -- Discord is bulking up its ad business after being primarily ad-free for years.

Although some users are annoyed by the introduction of ads and contend that they take up screen space and tarnish the user experience, Discord -- valued at roughly $15 billion -- is reportedly preparing for a public offering.