Snapchat Reportedly Working with Brands on "Discovery" News, Media, and Ad Platform
Snapchat may not just be for sending your friends quick quirky messages that disappear after a few seconds. The skyrocketing social media site could soon add advertisements, along with TV and movie clips and news.
As we previously reported, Snapchat has been valued recently at $10 billion and has been in talks with various companies to secure more funding. Now, according to sources "briefed on the discussions" for the Wall Street Journal, Snapchat has apparently been in talks with advertisers and media companies in recent weeks about offering ads and new content to its users.
Snapchat purportedly has been calling the idea "Snapchat Discovery." One of the WSJ's sources said it's set to be released in November of this year, and at least a dozen different media companies -- which include newspapers, magazines, and television networks -- have been in the content discussions for Snapchat Discovery.
The new feature would ostensibly allow users to watch video clips of TV shows and movies, along with reading news articles, by holding their finger down on the screen, which is how "snaps," or user messages, are viewed on the service. And of course, sponsored content or ads would be seemingly be mixed in as well, providing the highly valued startup -- which rejected a $3 billion buyout offer last year from Facebook -- with an even more highly valued asset: revenue.
There's no question why the content companies are interested in working with Snapchat. The ephemeral messaging startup has an incredibly strong following in one of the most coveted demographics, which is young and tech-savvy people, especially the teen set, aged 13 to 17. According to WSJ's sources inside the pitch meetings, 24 year-old Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has been claiming in presentations that the company now has over half a billion snaps sent per day, with over 50 percent of Snapchat users being in that demographic.
The company hasn't publicly disclosed details on its user base, but comScore estimated in June that 27 million people used the app, according to the WSJ, which is an 11 million gain in users over the course of a year.
Besides word of mouth and fear of missing out, Snapchat has steadily been offering more features to its users, announcing the addition of texts and video chat to its app in May of this year, and recently announcing a collective narrative tool called "Our Story." Similar to the narrative mode "My Story," the new event-based narrative lets lots of people at, say, a concert, who may not know each other collaborate on creating one large multimedia, multi-perspective report of the event.
Meanwhile, big tech companies like Facebook, Instagram, and Yahoo are still trying to get their respective Snapchat clones off the ground. Perhaps Snapchat's addition of ads might scare off some of its users, who in turn would be looking for an alternative.
Snapchatters, will you be turned away by new promotional snaps? Let us know in the comments section.
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