Discord’s advertising push continues: A Q&A with new Discord CBO Jules Shumaker

Jules Shumaker: “I think the most powerful ad format in media is the reward-based ad format. At the core foundation, that is the game-changer for Discord: that we have a player base that is completely oriented to that mechanic. That is what drives them — achievement, accomplishment, winning rewards. That format works for every advertiser in the world; there is no category that it won’t work for.

The question is, for this foundational player base that loves us, we are the place to talk and play before, during and after games — and that requires a pace of adoption from endemic to non-endemic. We could open it up to everyone right now and be wildly financially successful; I don’t think we have an economic decision at all. But the player is at the epicenter, and people want to see and participate in what’s relevant for them. As we go up the stack and learn what’s working for our player base, that’s going to be the decider of how broad we go and how fast we go.”

Digiday: Discord’s Quests represent direct business partnerships between Discord and advertisers or agencies; they are not sold programmatically or via self-serve buying. In this context, the endemic brands are the game publishers that have made up the bulk of the advertisers using the platform’s Quests. In November 2024, Discord’s ad business expanded into film and television via a Video Quest promoting HBO’s “Dune: Prophecy” series. Thus far, though, the platform has not opened up its ad products to any brands or advertisers outside the realms of gaming or media and entertainment. Discord’s sales currently amount to about $600 million, according to reporting by Bloomberg last year.

Shumaker’s answer made it clear that Discord is taking steps to maintain its core identity as a gaming-centric platform, despite the potential revenue that could come from expanding its ad offerings into other areas. Although Shumaker didn’t draw any explicit comparisons between Discord and other platforms, her answer shows that Discord might be taking cues from the past expansion of the ad businesses of other gaming-community-centric platforms such as Twitch, which lost some of its hold on gamers as it wooed non-endemic advertisers in 2022 and 2023.

Jules Shumaker: “In the early days of any business I’ve grown, pricing is a starting place, which is trial and error, A/B testing. When you’re at scale, pricing is simply a matter of return on ad spend — it’s actually super easy. Just look at AppLovin’s ad business, right? They don’t have to figure out the price; the marketplace figures out the price.

We’re in the phase right now where we aren’t demand- or supply-constrained. We are in the trial constraint, which is stair-stepping our way to the right growth path. For me, that requires some aggressive pricing to trial. I think we left a lot on the table, and that’s actually part of it. Sometimes, finding your fit means you have these swings, and then, occasionally, an advertiser wildly benefits from our underpricing, and there are other times where we see we might have pushed too far.”

Digiday: Discord’s ad products are currently offered at a fixed price based on projections of reach and frequency, brand lift and overall user engagement with each Quest, according to a Discord rep, who declined to disclose specific rates, but said that Discord sells its premium inventory with CPMs in the range of roughly $25 to $30, depending on variables such as format, region and reach. Discord is pricing by CPM instead of cost-per-action because both views and engagement with Quests provide advertisers value, and because it is the “right economic model for Discord,” per the rep, who said that the pricing was “competitively positioned within the premium inventory pricing tier while remaining below the highest-priced platforms.”

Although advertising is a promising potential revenue for Discord, it’s clear that it remains a relatively experimental business unit for the company going into 2025. At the moment, most of Discord’s revenue comes from Discord Nitro, the platform’s premium subscription plan. 

“It’s part of every leader at Discord’s function to care very much about the value prop of Nitro and the player at the root of that commerce experience,” Shumaker said. “I’m certainly not responsible for Nitro; as chief business officer, that is not in my purview, directly. But, indirectly, it’s in my purview.”

Jules Shumaker: “It’s a relatively small team, where my ambitions aren’t yet centered on a number or a pace of hiring. Remember: This is very new for Discord, to have a business-to-business approach to the developer community. So that is a great opportunity for us to get serious about developer relations; how do we help them succeed in their business?

[Discord vp of sales] Adam [Bauer] and I are perfect complements, right? He is more than capable of doing the ad circuit, and I will be more focused on the kinds of things that matter to game publishers and developers. He has quickly built a team that feels appropriately resourced and feels really engaged in the opportunity.”

Digiday: Although Shumaker stressed that she does not have a specific hiring target for 2025, Discord is building out its advertising team. At the moment, her team in sales and partnerships stands at roughly 40 members, according to a Discord rep. Discord is currently hiring for at least five roles explicitly based around advertising, including an advertising account executive intended to “build and grow a new, fast-expanding business line at Discord.” Other open advertising roles at the company include senior software engineering jobs for ads and ads infrastructure, as well as a product marketing manager for ad solutions and a head of lifecycle marketing.