Snapchat has called on Nielsen to provide third-party data on its advertising campaigns. It’s also working with ad tech companies Innovid and Sizmek for more granular data on campaigns’ performance, rectifying a long lament from the advertiser community about a lack of data from the platform.
Instagram’s 28-episode scripted series, Shield 5, is scheduled to play out over the next few weeks, with one 15-second episode per day posted to the show’s dedicated Instagram account. Last week, in time for the Iowa caucus voting, Snapchat released its first original show, Good Luck America, hosted by former CNN reporter Peter Hamby.
Snapchat is touting its advertising potential in this year’s political campaigns, but the cycle is moving too fast for the company to capture a sizable share of campaigns budgets, digital consultants say. The company is searching for acquisitions while teasing new advertising features it hopes will match Facebook in targeting and verification.
With developments like the launch of Twitter Moments and Snapchat covering breaking news, 2015 was the year social networks tried to establish some control over social media. While the platforms take different approaches to doing so, their underlying goal is the same: Gathering user-generated content before writers aggregate it themselves.
The cable channel and digital media network is getting a trial run as a channel on Snapchat’s Discover feature, starting today. Fusion has had a presence on the international version of Discover since January, when it launched, but will get “a couple months” on the U.S. and U.K. edition.
Exclusives
Competing for users’ short attention spans, Snapchat, Instagram and their rivals are engaged in a feature-focused arms race. About a week after Instagram debuted Boomerang — a new app that loops 1-second videos — Snapchat is rolling out some video-editing features of its own. With the new “Speed Modifiers,” Snapchat users can post videos in slow-motion, fast-forward or reverse.
Hispanic-targeted Univision announced the formation of a long-term partnership with photo-sharing application Snapchat. The two companies said the success of their Live Stories initiative focused on a soccer match in April between the U.S. and Mexico spurred the relationship
Videos released on the platform this week by Goldroom, an electronic musician, will be the latest step in the company’s evolving role as a media outlet.
As part of its Discover service, Snapchat is preparing to sell 10-second ads for 2 cents per view. The pricing is considerably less than previous estimates. Launched at the beginning of the year, Discover gives media partners their own channel on which they can feature content produced specifically for Snapchat’s young audience.
Fusion will bring five original shows to Snapchat’s Discover platform. The shows will be unscripted and will court an international audience. They include The Artisans, Weird Threads and Science Fiction, Science Fact.
Snapchat’s Discover feature — a menu of free channels from 11 media companies that publish video clips and news stories directly to Snapchat — is giving advertisers millions of video views and a familiar model.
And to think that just a few months ago, few people over 30 ever heard of Snapchat. Now the ephemeral messaging app has set its sights on live sports, making deals with the NCAA and Turner. The goal is to include live sports in its “Our Story” feature, which will begin with coverage of the NCAA’s Final Four.
With a number of national media outlets successfully jumping into Snapchat Discover in its early days, local media are weighing whether or not to follow. Diana Marszalek examines the early forays some smaller outlets are making, and the pros and cons of investing in original content for the nascent platform.
To reach younger audiences, established media brands are experimenting with the popular app. It may seem like an odd strategy. The stories put out through the app by partners such as CNN, ESPN and National Geographic vanish quickly. But the hope is that the estimated tens of millions of Snapchat users — mostly between 13 and 25 — will also swipe to view a video on the crisis in Ukraine, take a cute pet quiz or try out a cronut recipe found on the app.
The Wall Street Journal reports Facebook, Snapchat and streaming-startup Vessel are promising large TV-channel owners better terms for their video programming than Google’s YouTube, hoping to capitalize on mounting frustration with the Web giant. WSJ subscribers can read the full story here.
Not that long ago, Snapchat turned down a massive $3-billion acquisition offer from Facebook, and almost everyone thought the company had lost its mind. Now, the startup is reportedly raising money in a financing round that will value it at a staggering $19 billion. Is there anything that could justify putting that kind of market value on a company that is only four years old and still has almost no revenue?
If there’s an “It Girl” in the online-media space right now — a single company that sums up the current landscape, for better or worse — it would have to be Snapchat. The four-year-old company is the platform everyone wants to be seen with. But what exactly do media companies get out of this? Is it a potential share of future revenues (assuming they appear)? Is it exposure to new users, and especially much-sought-after millennials? And are those returns going to be worth it, or are they building another house of cards on someone else’s land?
Giving some power back to professional publishers, Snapchat just unveiled Discover — a service for media partners to steer the social media conversation. They include National Geographic, Vice, Yahoo News, Comedy Central, Cosmopolitan, CNN, The Food Network and ESPN.
Snapchat, the ephemeral messaging app, is officially taking the advertising plunge. In a blog post on Friday, the Los Angeles-based company said it was introducing advertising onto its platform. “An advertisement will appear in your Recent Updates from time to time, and you can choose if you want to watch it,” the post reads. “No biggie.”
