Tag: snapchat

Snapchat Adds Universal Search Bar & Global Live Story

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat has revamped its iOS and Android app to add a few new tweaks that should help improve user experience and push its global reach. To begin with, the updated apps now feature a universal search bar on top of the interface, enabling users to easily search for people, brands, and publishers from Discover to follow. In addition, users can also find specific Live Stories when searching by keywords. Besides the search bar, Snapchat is also adding a few shortcuts for in-app navigation and a global live story called “Our Story” that will feature snaps from all over the world.

What Brands Need To Do
Brands have long been complaining about Snapchat’s limited and hard-to-access search functions, and this introduction of a universal search bar should make it easier for users to discover publishers and brands on Snapchat. A Recent report by digital marketing firm L2 found 64% brands now have established a presence on the hot messaging app, and with each brand-friendly updates, Snapchat is sure to lure more brands to join. As Snapchat continues to improve its ad products to match its rapid growth, brands, especially those going after a young-skewing global audience, need to start integrating Snapchat into your social and content strategies.

 

Source: Mashable

Snapchat Teases Secret Filters, Hints At The Future Of AR Marketing

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snap Inc. has started testing a new hidden feature that let users unlock secret filters when they point the camera to the charging case of Spectacles, the camera-embedded sunglasses the company introduced last year. As the twitter video below demonstrates, when one opens Snapchat and points the camera to the “Spectacles” printed on the charging case, the app unlocks a special filter that shows floating bubbles of snaps, similar to the circular videos captured by Spectacles.


What Brands Need To Do
Fun and innocuous as this new feature may seem at first glance, it might just be hinting at the next big ad product for Snap. It is easy to imagine how Snap Inc. would soon follow the roadmap set by its branded Geofilters and come out with “sponsored secret filters” for brands to buy. Looking beyond that, however, a bigger opportunity lies in the fact that this feature can transform ordinary objects, and by extension, the physical space they reside in, into an AR-enhanced branding opportunity. For example, an auto brand can use this feature to drive car enthusiasts to dealerships to unlock special themed filters while a retailer may work with Snap Inc. to turn an in-store installation into a trigger for unlocking secret filters that contain special offers or branded content. 

With the launch of Spectacles, Snapchat changed its name to Snap Inc. and rebranded itself as a “camera company,” aiming to liberate cameras from smartphones and integrate them into other wearable products for a more frictionless user experience. As it continues to improve its existing ad products, more and more brands are joining Snapchat to reach mobile consumers. In fact, a new report by digital marketing firm L2 found that Snapchat’s brand adoption rate grew 50% from January to October last year, with 64% of brands now established a presence on the app. As Snap continues to bring augmented reality technology to the mass market with its camera-centric products, brands will need to start to think about how AR may add value to their products, services, and marketing efforts.

 

Source: Twitter @MosheIsaacian & AdExchanger

 

Turner Extends Snapchat Partnership To Reach Millennials With Original Shows

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Turner is extending its partnership with Snap Inc. to reach Millennial mobile consumers with  original content specifically made for Snapchat and more collaborative ad efforts. The original shows will be based on programming from TBS, truTV, and other popular Turner-owned networks and will appear on Snapchat’s Discover channels. Previously, Turner also worked with Snapchat on Live Stories for sports organizations like the NCAA in March, which has been renewed as part of the expanded partnership.The extended partnership will also result in more collaborative ad sales for the two companies as they aim to create more sponsorship and ad opportunities on the Discover channels.

What Brands Should Do
This partnership extension indicates Turner’s plan of leveraging content to reach Snapchat’s growing audience and shows Snapchat’s deepening ties with media owners. For brand advertisers, initiatives like this are what makes Snapchat an increasingly promising ad-supported media channel to reach consumers, especially those who are shunning traditional media and spending time on mobile channels instead. As Snapchat’s ad business catches up to its rapid growth and starts to compete for more ad dollars with leading sellers of mobile ads such as Facebook and Google. now is the time for brands to consider getting on Snapchat to reach its young-skewing users.

 

Source: AdAge

Maybelline Sponsors Holiday Gift Guide On Snapchat To Reach Shoppers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Maybelline is sponsoring a two-day campaign on Snapchat to reach Millennial holiday shoppers. The company is partnering with Sweet, the Snapchat-only publication created by Hearst, to launch a pop-up holiday gift guide that will run for today and Saturday. The sponsored gift guide highlights a collection of holiday gifts on Sweet’s Discover channel, interspersed with ads from the makeup brand. According to Hearst, Sweet gets about 16 million unique views a month and about one million daily. Previously, the Snapchat publisher also run a five-part themed series called “The United States of Sweet” sponsored by GE this summer.

What Brands Should Do
Snapchat’s ad business is hitting its stride as the company behind the popular messaging app files for a confidential IPO and start selling its first hardware product Spectacles (which we have managed to get two pairs ready for demo here at the Lab). This sponsored campaign serves as a good example of brands using messaging apps as a marketing channel to connect with customers. As Snapchat continues to improve its ad products to match its rapid growth, brands need to consider getting on Snapchat to reach its growing number of users via not only standard video ads, but also more unconventional ad units such as custom Geofilters and branded selfie lenses.

For more information on how brands should leverage interesting branded content to win back the increasingly ad-avoidant consumers, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

Lead image courtesy of Sweet’s promotional image

Shell Remakes Branded Music Video Into Interactive Vertical Video For Snapchat

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Multinational energy giant Shell worked with six artists led by Jennifer Hudson and created a branded music video to promote its clean energy initiatives in October. Now, the company has retooled the video into a vertical format that is native to Snapchat, where it will run as Snap Ads throughout December. Shell also added some interactive elements to the music video, allowing viewers to swipe between the six artists as the video plays to create a personalized experience. They can also tap on the video to see additional animations explaining Shell’s #makethefuture energy ideas.

What Brands Should Do
This Shell’s campaign shows how brands can retool their existing branded content to better fit user behaviors on mobile platforms and therefore maximize engagement. As consumer attention shifts toward mobile and many driven to ad-blockers by the subpar digital ad experience, brands are finding it increasingly difficult to reach their desired audience via traditional media channels.Therefore, brands need to take a cue from this example and start to explore new forms of advertising, such as sponsored or branded content as well as native video ads, to circumvent consumers’ growing ad aversion and pique their interest.

For more information on how brands can leverage interesting branded content to earn consumer attention, check out the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

Instagram Adds Ephemeral Live Video And Messages

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues its relentless chase after the Snapchat users by adding live videos and disappearing messages to Instagram. Starting today, users can start live broadcasting within Instagram Stories. Unlike other popular live-streaming platforms such as Facebook Live and Periscope, which allow users to save live videos for later viewing, the live videos on Instagram will become unavailable as soon as the broadcast ends. Besides live video, Instagram is also adding ephemeral messages to its Direct Messages, which appear in a dedicated horizontal message bar atop the permanent message threads.

This major update comes on the heels of Facebook’s several big moves to copy Snapchat features in the past month, including testing Snapchat-like features in its main app, buying a facial recognition startup that can help it develop smart selfie lenses, and even launching a Snapchat clone in emerging markets. It is safe to say that the social network giant is feeling the heat of the fast-growing messaging app.

What Brands Should Do
Nevertheless, Instagram’s 300 million daily monthly active users still double Snapchat’s user base at the moment. For brands, the addition of live video and ephemeral messages to Instagram opens the door for new types of customer interactions on one of the most popular social platforms. As Facebook continues to court young Millennial audience with Snapchat-inspired features, brands should consider incorporating these new features into their existing social strategies and choose the live-streaming platform that best suits their campaign objectives.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Snapchat Teams Up With Foursquare For Better Targeted Geofilters

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat is set to improve its location-based ad products by striking a data deal with local discovery and recommendation service Foursquare. This deal will provide brand marketers with access to Foursquare’s location data, allowing them to serve branded Geofilters in a more targeted manner. According to Snapchat, the deal will open “thousands” of locations and categories, such as parks or museums, for brands to buy ads against.

In related news, Bloomberg reports that Snap Inc., the parent company of Snapchat, has confidentially filed for its IPO after months of speculations. The company is reportedly seeking seeking to raise as much as $4 billion at a valuation of between $25 billion and $35 billion, making it the largest U.S. technology IPO since Facebook’s debut in 2012 with a value of $81.2 billion.

What Brands Should Do
With this partnership, Snapchat has shown once again it is keen to partner with ad tech companies in order to meet brand marketers’ increasing demand more data and measurement for digital campaigns. With improved location data, Snapchat advertisers can now better tailor their campaigns in more granular way to reach their targeted audience. For example, a retailer may zero in on a specific store location inside a mall with an on-premise exclusive Geofilter to encourage store visits.

As Snapchat continues to improve its ad products to match its rapid growth, brands need to consider getting on Snapchat to reach its young-skewing users via not only standard video ads, but also more unconventional ad units such as custom Geofilters and branded selfie lenses.

 

Source: AdWeek & Bloomberg

Snap Inc. Starts Selling Spectacles With Pop-Up “Snapbots”

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snap Inc. has started rolling out its first hardware product Spectacles, a pair of camera-equipped sunglasses that automatically syncs videos with your Snapchat, in an intriguing fashion. The company will be rolling out Snapbot, an interactive vending machine painted in its signature bright yellow, around the country, starting today with one on Venice Beach near its L.A. headquarter. The Snapbot features a large eye-shaped display and can recognize customers approaching thanks to its front-facing camera. The locations of the Snapbots will change on a daily basis and fans can visit spectacles.com to discover where the Snapbots will appear next.

Why Brands Should Care
Snap Inc. is smart to choose this intriguing way to roll out Spectacles, which drives fan enthusiasm and engagement with elements of surprise and limited-time urgency. But perhaps more importantly, the arrival of Spectacles signals that we are approaching an age where cameras are increasingly becoming one of our primary input sources of our digital interactions. Beyond Snapchat, Mastercard is now allowing app users in Europe to authenticate their payments with a selfie, and the Hawaii Tourism Authority recently launched a digital campaign that uses facial recognition technology to create personalized travel recommendations and offer tailored travel packages. As these examples indicate, the surging prominence of visual input is set to bring a new set of opportunities and challenges that brands will have to learn to navigate in order to adapt to the shifting consumer digital habits and stay connected with their audiences.

 

Source: AdWeek

Header image courtesy of Spectacles’ YouTube

Snapchat Gears Up For More App-Install Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
After adding support for programmatic ads to its ad API, Snapchat has confirmed that it is testing support for app-install ads, which the company launched in June. The popular messaging app ran its first app-install ad in February, and adding this ad unit to its API will certainly encourage more brands to try it. Also, Snapchat is reportedly building a self-serve ad platform so brand marketers can set up their campaigns without going through a third-party ad partner or Snapchat’s sales team.

What Brands Should Do
Micro-investing app Acorns reports that it is seeing 40% higher install rates with Snapchat than it does with Facebook, attributing the increase to Snapchat’s swipe-to-download functionality. With the expanding ad API and some new measurement tools, Snapchat’s ad business seems to be catching up to its rapid growth and ready to compete for more ad dollars with leading sellers of app-install ads such as Facebook and Google. For brands, now is the time to consider getting on Snapchat to reach its young-skewing users.

 

Source: AdAge

Fox Leverages Live Snapcode Activation To Drive Viewer Engagement

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
During last night’s live broadcast of the remake of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Fox placed three Snapcodes as bumpers between ads and the broadcast. For the uninitiated, Snapcodes are essentially QR codes made by Snapchat that people can scan using the app. Viewers were invited to scan the Snapcodes on their TV to unlock special Rocky Horror-themed selfie Lenses on Snapchat. This marks the first time a TV network has incorporated Snapcodes into a live broadcast.

What Brands Should Do
One reason Fox decided to put Snapcodes in its live broadcast is that it wants to engage the significant number of Millennials who are going to midnight shows of the original Rocky Horror movie and watched the trailer for its remake according to its research. This activation sets a precedent for TV networks using Snapcodes to make their broadcast more interactive and engaging, opening the door for more brands to use Snapcodes for their own TV ads.

 

Source: AdWeek