How Discord plans to pitch advertisers at the IAB gaming PlayFronts

Discord is using this year’s IAB PlayFronts, a showcase for the gaming community to brands, to make its most direct pitch yet to traditional advertisers. Since launching in 2015, the chat platform has largely stayed away from mainstream brand partnerships, focusing instead on its core gaming audience. But after rolling out its ad business last year, Discord is beginning to expand beyond endemic advertisers—and PlayFronts marks a key moment in that shift. At PlayFronts, which will be held in New York on Tuesday, Discord will serve as the primary sponsor, co-host the official afterparty, lead the first panel of the day and offer a Discord Cafe, which will serve as its hub for meeting with prospective brand partners. “We have not yet delivered value at scale to big advertisers,” said Jules Shumaker, chief business officer at Discord. “This is a real opportunity for us to get them to kick our tires.” Data-Driven Marketing Playbook Join us May 22 in NYC to explore how data powers marketing Learn more here The effort comes as major brands seek out new ways to engage gaming audiences, which tend to be younger and intensely loyal to their favorite platforms. Walmart this month quintupled-down on its strategy to reach these consumers with an experience on Minecraft—the fifth gaming platform it has activated in the past year. Meanwhile, McDonald’s and the NFL have recently launched efforts to bring these audiences into the fold. More: How Walmart’s video game miniseries features real products Discord, which had never appeared at PlayFronts until now, is entering the event at just the right time, said Zoe Soon, VP of experience at IAB. “It’s indicative of the shrinking divide between gaming and advertising as more and more brands recognize the power of gaming as a channel to reach valuable audiences,” Soon said. PlayFronts, now in its fourth year, is similar to the annual IAB NewFronts, but its focus on gaming brings together advertisers, ad tech providers, gaming publishers and other gaming-adjacent companies. These groups hash out partnership opportunities and explore topics relevant to games advertising, such as tapping into gamers’ evolving interests and leveraging ancillary technology like livestreams and AI. This year’s PlayFronts speakers include representatives from Activision Blizzard, Twitch, Samsung and Google, with plenty of brands and agencies expected to be in attendance. Discord’s selling points Discord has emerged as an enticing partner for advertisers thanks to its roughly 200 million monthly active users, 93% of whom play games, according to Discord data. In fact, the majority of Discord users play multiple games, which boosts the platform’s advertising potential since brands could feasibly reach different swaths of the gaming community in one place, Shumaker said. Of course, Discord has its own issues that brands will want to hash out. The platform has dealt with its fair share of inappropriate content, including cyberbullying, scams and sexual grooming. More generally, gamers have tended to be resistant to brands that invade their favorite platforms. At PlayFronts, Shumaker will seek to provide context for why Discord has been mostly hesitant to partner with mainstream brands. The platform’s strategy thus far has been narrow, Shumaker admitted, serving mostly game developers behind titles such as Street Fighter and World of Warcraft. The reason for this gradual approach was to figure out how Discord could integrate ads in a way that doesn’t irritate users, Shumaker said. Discord’s co-founder and CEO, Jason Citron, previously shunned advertising as being too intrusive and said that the platform would instead rely on subscription products to generate revenue. That changed last April when Discord launched Quests, invitations for users to play a sponsoring company’s game and receive an in-game reward for participation. Quests were first made available exclusively to game developers. In November, HBO became the first non-gaming brand to run a Quest for its “Dune Prophecy” TV show, which hinged on showing users a trailer for the series. The next month, Mountain Dew’s gaming arm teamed up with World of Warcraft to sponsor a Quest, further pushing Discord into traditional brand territory. Read more: Inside Discord’s first ad offering Discord has launched more than 70 Quest campaigns over the last year, according to a new company report on its advertising performance. The platform found that users who accepted a Quest were three times more likely to participate in another one. This month, Discord announced that video Quests will launch on its mobile platform this summer. The format was previously available only on PC and consoles. At PlayFronts, Discord will also lean into its ability to support larger gaming ad campaigns as a selling point to marketers. For example, a brand that partners with Activision Blizzard to launch a Call of Duty-themed campaign could double down in the game’s Discord channel with a complementary Quest, Shumaker said. While the platform will be pitching brands at PlayFronts, advertisers will also be auditioning for Discord, which intends to be discerning about the brands it partners with, Shumaker said. For example, Discord is looking for brands that cater to men aged 18 to 34. Some are already trying to bridge the gap to gamers in ways that make sense to their business, Shumaker said, such as snack marketers serving the community’s late-night eating habits. “There’s a little bit of that energy in our space that I believe we want for our next phase of growth,” Shumaker said.

How Discord plans to pitch advertisers at the IAB gaming PlayFronts

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