You won’t escape it: after resisting for almost 10 years, Discord will add advertising to its messaging service.
Discord’s health is not in good shape. After a significant wave of layoffs of 17% of its workforce last January, the messaging service is looking for new sources of income.
An article from Wall Street Journal discusses Discord’s new strategy for this year 2024, with the integration of advertisements for the first time on its service since its launch.
Ads are coming to Discord
Until now, Discord monetized itself with its Nitro subscription offer, which offered various cosmetic benefits to users, but also to servers and their administrators.
But despite its 200 million monthly active users and a planned IPO, Discord is still struggling to remain financially balanced. The service will add advertisements to its users “ in the next weeks» after having protected them from such a model for all these years.
Concretely, Discord users will soon see advertisements coming from “video game developers» which will notably be able to offer “gifts to users who complete in-game tasks while their friends watch on Discord» to quote theWall Street Journal.
These announcements will be visible in the lower left part of the screen, as is already the case for announcements concerning its Nitro offer. If the article cites a way to disable ads in the settings, we imagine that the option will only be offered to paying subscribers. We will have to wait for the official announcements to be sure.
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