Ads Are Coming to Discord, But You Might Be Able to Turn It Off

Over time, all major social media platforms have had to resort to serving ads to their audiences to keep their businesses running. Unlike other services, Discord, a popular chat app for gamers, has managed to stay ad-free but it seems this may change as the platform seeks to grow revenue through ads.

This news comes from the Wall Street Journal, which mentions that the social media startup will be adopting ads “in the coming weeks”. Discord had committed itself to staying ad-free, and not being dependent on them. It was inevitable that the platform would cave to serving ads given the financial struggles that it had been facing for a while now.

Discord will try to keep the ads relevant to the user based on their gameplay, age, and other demographics. It seems like users will be able to earn rewards through ads as well. Users would have to stream certain games with their friends and complete in-game tasks in said games to win rewards. What these rewards could be is not known at this time.

The game-centric platform also mentions that users will have the option to turn off ads. Whether it will be available in the free or paid version is currently unknown. Discord is also hiring “more than a dozen people for the position of ad-sales” to implement ads in the app.

Discord has tried to keep the business afloat through its Nitro subscription which offered additional benefits over the free version. The platform has even dabbed its toe into NFTs which received a lot of backlash from the community. It will be interesting to see the reaction of its users to the introduction of ads. I suspect there will be somewhat of a friction from the fanbase, at first. But over time, users will understand the platform’s need to resort to ads in the app.