Discord adds lower funnel with outcomes push

Here’s how it works: Players accept a Quest and link their Discord and game accounts, allowing Discord to automatically track their progress as they play. Brands can then reward them for completing meaningful in-game actions, using Discord’s Social SDK and Events API.

The first Play Quest+ campaign will launch with Electronic Arts’ Battlefield 6 in early September.

“Play Quest, in our view, was always an incredibly exciting version of that product that up until recently we had to build a lot of infrastructure and product tech to be able to achieve it,” said Adam Bauer, global vp of advertising at Discord. “What we’re going from is a time-based action with a Play Quest to a Play Quest+, which is an event-based action.”

The thinking behind Quest+ is pretty straightforward. Discord already has the audience and the engagement. Now it’s trying to give advertisers a reason to spend further down the funnel.

“The most interesting feature of Play Quest+ is the ability to plug into advertisers’ own ecosystems, enabling better conversion data and allowing users to collect rewards in-game rather than simply for use on Discord itself,” said Claire Holubowskyj, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. “External integrations target growth on both sides: from IP-motivated users that can benefit from more attractive in-game rewards, and from advertisers who can integrate into Discord’s formats more seamlessly — previously a particular challenge for growing interactive ad formats.”

For marketers, the appeal is potentially less about another way to reach gamers and more about what happens after the impression. 

But that comes with a balancing act for Discord: its communities are built on trust, and the platform needs to make sure Quest+ feels like part of the gaming experience rather than an interruption to it, according to Nicole van Zanten, co-president and chief growth officer at ICUC.

“Discord servers and their popularity in general run on trust. People are there to play with friends, not be marketed to,” she said. “While I think a format that only shows up around actions players are already taking can work, the moment it feels like an ad wearing a game’s clothes, the community will most certainly clock it.”

The reward itself is another potential make-or-break point. Discord needs to make sure the incentive feels like something players genuinely value within a particular game or community, rather than simply a payment for completing an action.

“The reward has to be worth the community’s attention. If it’s a badge or cosmetic that means something inside that server’s culture, it lands,” she added. “But if the reward is generic points for generic actions, it reads as filler and the community tunes it out fast.”

That same community dynamic is also part of what makes Discord attractive to game marketers in the first place.

“Discord’s main strength is in community, which is key to sustaining online multiplayer games,” Holubowskyj said. “While the Discord users most likely to engage with Quest+ ads will already be familiar with Battlefield, limiting incrementality, Electronic Art’s primary target will be to tap into the network effects to regain momentum behind the Battlefield franchise.” 

Quest+ is still an early step, but it points to how Discord wants its ad business to evolve: beyond just selling access to gaming communities and towards the actions that those communities take.

“Our vision from the get was how we can create a full-funnel solution for game marketers who want to reach our audience, because 90% of our users play games weekly,” said Bauer. We’ve been really intentional about how we’ve rolled out our brand solutions over the past couple of years, but getting to a performance, outcome-based business is something we’ve always wanted to do, and so this product [Play Quest+] is an incredible step forward in being able to achieve that.”

The timing of the move is also notable. Bauer declined to comment on Discord’s confidential IPO filing back in January, but the company is now building out its ad business at the same time as it prepares for life as a public company. That means demonstrating to prospective investors that it can generate reliable, recurring and growing revenue, while also balancing the quarterly performance expectations of public markets with its longer-term product ambitions.

Quest+ could therefore become an important test of whether Discord can turn the engagement it already has with gamers into a more meaningful and measurable ad business. But the format is also part of a broader push to build out Discord’s monetization products, rather than a standalone ad bet.

Alongside Play Quest+, Discord is expanding social commerce by bringing its Shop into game servers, rolling out new game stats widgets and extending its Social SDK to mobile. The company said its PC social SDK has already driven a 31% increase in retention, a 47% increase in session length and a 57% increase in game launch days, according to internal data.

If Quest+ is the beginning of that journey, the bigger test will be how the product performs, and what Discord wants its wider ad business to look like even 12 months from now.

“We really see Discord as a communications platform and our social graph really becoming a full funnel layer for game discovery, engagement, and monetization,” Bauer said. “Twelve months from now, success would be having that full funnel suite of products that allows a marketer, whatever stage of their journey, whether it be brand, mid-funnel, or lower funnel performance outcomes, being able to help them achieve that – that would be success to me.”