Discord announced that its first year of Quests generated 70 campaigns with advertising partners and millions of rewards that kept gamers engaged.

Speaking at the ad-focused IAB Playfronts event, Peter Sellis, senior vice president of product at Discord, said that, in the first year of Quests, Discord had found a way to make game discovery and engagement better. 

Discord was created to bring friends together around games. It’s a digital living room where players around the world can talk and hangout before, during, and after gaming. Its goal is to make Discord the best place to play with friends. The company is reportedly planning an initial public offering, after turning down a $12 billion acquisition offer from Microsoft years ago.

The company expanded beyond games in the pandemic, but it has refocused around games more recently, with 93% of its audience playing games. Over the years, Discord learned that the people who really love Discord are those who play games and connect around gaming. In fact, our highly engaged community of 200+ million monthly active users spend a combined 1.5 billion hours each month playing across 8,000+ titles on PC alone, Sellis said.

We’ve also learned that, while game discovery as a whole is challenging, Discord is a bright spot: the long-tail of games being played make up a larger percentage of playtime for Discord users than for the industry as a whole. Discord serves as a thriving environment for developers to connect with audiences eager to experience new games.

That’s why, last year, we embarked on a journey to help connect players on Discord with the games they like to play, all while asking ourselves what we could do to also help developers and brands reach players authentically. The answer was Quests: an innovative rewarded ad format designed for our community.

Sellis said at the IAB Playfronts event that gamers are a tough crowd to advertise to, given their insistence on authenticity. Discord has been able to establish itself as a gaming-friendly brand through a long journey, he said. It evolved from an activity in the home focused on young males, and it has exploded with the rise of the internet and multiplayer games.

“Discord is really at the center of the digital living room, a kind of next space. There are 200 million people using our service, especially for Gen Z. This is how they gather. This is how they experience belonging,” Sellis said.

Authenticity is tough, he said.

“These people can spot Gen AI from a million miles away, and they are not going to hesitate to let you have it if they think it’s lame. Trust me, I work at Discord. It’s in the name,” Sellis said. “Of our 200 million users, 93% of them are playing games. They’re playing 1.5 billion hours per month. You can do the math. That’s a lot per person. And I think most importantly, on a weekly basis, about half of them are actually speaking to their friends, live talking on Discord.”

Quests is advertising reimagined for players

With Quests, Discord built ads where everyone wins: players earn rewards for engaging with content and games, and advertisers authentically reach their audience. The company grew Quests intentionally with a focus on adding value for our advertisers and users. When they earn one reward, players come back for more. In fact, users who have accepted a targeted Quest are three times more likely to accept another Quest.

And, it’s not just the users who are feeling rewarded. More than half of Discord’s Quests partners have already returned for a second campaign, demonstrating the win-win nature of the offering for users and advertisers.

Over the past year, Discord has powered successful campaigns for some of the most recognizable gaming and entertainment franchises, as well as ones that are new on the scene — including Diablo, Street Fighter, Max’s Dune: Prophecy, World of Warcraft, Genshin Impact and more: 

• miHoYo used Quests to energize their audience around a major game update that introduced a new character, world, and storyline events in Genshin Impact. They launched a Play Quest with a high-value in-game reward. The campaign attracted millions of participants and generated an 80% increase in playtime during the week when the Quest ran.
• Max aimed to build excitement and drive awareness for its highly anticipated TV series Dune: Prophecy, engaging audiences and creating buzz ahead of the premiere. Max partnered with Discord to launch the first-ever Video Quest, featuring a 2-minute 38-second trailer that achieved an 85% completion rate from those who interacted with the request.

How Discord got this far

Prior to Quests, Discord had a lot of discussions with developers and brands who were struggling to reliably and authentically connect with players, fighting for the attention of the same tech-savvy, hard-to-reach audiences through traditional advertising. 

Players often reject traditional advertising, and can be vocal about brands that don’t feel authentic — sometimes making it challenging for marketers to reach gaming audiences. With these obstacles, marketers can’t always rely on traditional playbooks. Winning means using alternative platforms and focusing on leveraging existing behaviors, not interrupting gameplay or forcing attention.

Now, with Quests, advertisers can reach players in the digital living rooms where they hang out. These intimate friend groups are ideal for authentic engagement, as evidenced by the seven times increase in gameplay when users play with at least one friend.

Today, Quests come in two powerful varieties to serve brands across gaming, media, and entertainment:

• Video Quests: Focused on driving awareness, this format is ideal for trailers, new season announcements, downloadable content (DLC) drops, and other video content. 
• Play Quests: Designed to drive gameplay, these quests require users to play or stream a game to unlock rewards, creating an authentic connection between players and the games they love.

Discord will continue to roll out new features, like the recently announced expansion of Video Quests to mobile, to help advertisers expand their campaign reach, open the door to new advertising opportunities and more.

“Gaming is nearly ubiquitous among younger generations, with 90 to 95% of Gen Z and Gen Alpha identifying as a gamer. But it’s not just young people. Everyone’s a gamer ,” said Zoe Soon, vice president of the IAB Experiences Center, in a talk at IAB Playfronts. “The average age of a gamer is 37. I think we’re actually calling that an elder millennial now, which is kind of depressing. Call us what you want. We make up the majority of household spenders in America.”

Soon added, “Gaming is a great way to reach engaged audiences at scale. The preview of Grand Theft Auto VI racked up an incredible 93 million views in just 24 hours after being released. It’s hard to conceptualize a number that big. The affinity gamers feel for gaining titles is unmatched.”

More details at IAB Playfronts

Adam Bauer, vice president of sales at Discord, said in a talk at IAB that 80% of the audience is 13 to 34 years old, which means it is a digitally native Gen Z audience that is comprised of hardcore gamers.

To address those gamers, Discord came up with Quests. It balanced the notion of having gamers invest their time in something and then being rewarded for it. It’s a rewarded ads format.

“We really wanted to do something with gamified advertising, making it fun to meet our audience where it is right where they are with something that engage engages them and then obviously gives the rewards back for investing their time with us,” Bauer said. “We really wanted to create a product that was truly a win win for our users, for us as a platform and for our partners.”

He noted, “Authenticity is crucial” and authentic communication was a necessity. Critics are always vocal.

“Nothing is more powerful than peer to peer influence. 90% of our servers, our friend spaces, are intimate friend groups that are private, and we really have the ability to open up this generational white space for marketers that really doesn’t exist on a lot of platforms,” Adam said.

HBO ran a video Quest ad, where Dune fans got to see a reveal for Dune Prophecy. About 85% of the viewers finished the 2.5 minute trailer, and they received rewards for it. Just about everybody who got a reward redeemed it.

Bauer said Quests can work for older games, getting people to come back in who have not been in the game for years.

“We’re just getting started with our rewards,” he said. “We have some really exciting rewards coming.”

Rewards can take the form of cosmetics or avatar decoration, with other types coming later. Mobile video is coming in June, and that will unlock more of the Discord user base.