Discord, a popular communication platform among gamers, will start showing ads starting next week. According to what has been announced so far, advertisements must be displayed in the bottom left corner of the platform.
Initially, the content will be paid for by game development companies, in what is being called “Sponsored Quests”, or “Sponsored Missions”. Users of the service will receive rewards for completing missions within the games, while being followed in real time by at least one spectator.
Jason Citron, CEO of the platform, until recently was completely against the idea of running ads on Discord, however, the economic situation experienced by the company made him change his position. Now, the company’s boss defends advertising as a way to boost its growth.
Officially launched in May 2015, the service has never run advertising of any kind and derives a large part of its total revenue from subscriptions to the “Nitro” plan, which offers some benefits to subscribers who pay monthly, starting at R$24.99.
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The platform has always been known and praised by its users because, unlike some of its main competitors, it uses other monetization methods to raise revenue, interfering as little as possible with the users’ experience.
New sales strategies
As part of its new business strategy, Discord is also planning to subsequently hire new professionals to work in the sales department. All of this happens just a few months after the company cut approximately 17% of its entire workforce to, supposedly, achieve a gain in organization and efficiency.
At the time, Citron dismissed all rumors of a crisis. And he stated that the dismissal was the result of the recognition that the company’s management made more hires than necessary in recent years. He also guaranteed that the cuts would not affect operations in any way.
