Quests: All You Need To Know

Discord is launching ads! What does this mean?

First thing's first: the only ad format Discord are releasing is Quests. There won't suddenly be banner ads, pre-roll or any other type of sponsored content except what we provide through authentic community partnerships, and what you see from Quests.

What are Quests?

Despite the PR around the launch of Quests going live on April Fool's Day, the news is true: Discord is introducing an ad format on the platform for game developers to reach their target audience with paid media.

Discord introduced Sponsored Quests on March 7th in a blog post by Peter Sellis, the company's SVP of Product. Sellis noted that users could expect to start seeing these quests in the "coming weeks." Quests are designed to provide PC gamers with in-game rewards when they encourage friends to watch their gaming streams on Discord. Swaleha Carlson, Discord's senior product communications manager, confirmed to Ars Technica that Sponsored Quests are set to launch this week, hence the renewed public attention on it.

A Quest will show up to targeted users on the platform, prompting them to stream the game in question, and ask their friends to watch:

If they do so, they'll unlock an in-game item and be on their merry way.

Who's it for?

Only select game developers are able to run a Quest, and we expect this to be a low number to start with, increasing towards the end of the year. Of course, this is likely only the start for Discord in embarking on the long road of a brand-funded ecosystem and we always had this possibility in mind when starting Wildfire, which is why we wanted to become the influencer-style offering for the platform.

Just like on other platforms, you can run a paid ad directly and also employ influencers to advocate due to the trust and authority they have with their audience.

Discord is no different – with 200 community managers with 19 million members in their communities, we're excited to see how game devs and, in the future brands, start spending on Discord and looking for alternative ways to show up, and we'll be there to greet them.

What's the objective of Quests?

The end goal is for gamers to do the marketing for you by streaming to their friends and being rewarded for it. Game devs can expect to have more streams and time spent with the game reported by Discord thanks to Quests, but it appears the journey ends within Discord, which is likely a deliberate mechanic to keep users on platform rather than send gamers to download and play straight away, as we do for our clients.

Does this mean Wildfire won't work with game developers?

Quite the opposite! Discord releasing Quests and courting game developers to advertise on the platform is a huge deal for us. Not only will the idea of marketing on Discord become more widespread, as is our core mission, but we have more opportunities now to amplify Quests across our network of authentic recommendations, which is incredibly exciting.

Here's an example:
Instead of just being alerted of a Fortnite Quest by a pop-up, one of our communities might also be running a Fortnite tournament that requires you to participate in the Quest to qualify and win a $1,000 prize.

More rewards = more action and gameplay = better for everyone.

We'll make Quests more powerful and fruitful for game developers and Discord with this very simple, authentic, influencer mechanic using our 19 million strong reach on the platform (with 2.3 million of that exclusive), skilled team, creative strategy and past campaign data.

Varied messaging and complementary calls to action, delivered by the community manager those gamers trust, essentially mean that Quests form the bulk of a campaign with additional creative and CTA opportunities available through Wildfire's network.

This also brings Discord creators into the equation and makes them part of the monetisation sphere of Discord, which we are very proud to be leading the charge on. Creators can support Quests that are running by encouraging their community to get streaming.

What about brands wanting to show up on Discord?

You won't be able to run a Quest (just yet) and we work with brands like Intel, Samsung, L'Oreal, Acer, Playstation and more to create sponsored content via community managers via our network of 19 million members on Discord – get in touch to learn more about how this works for your brand.