Tag: snapchat

Branded Content and Customizable Ads Coming To Snapchat

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat made two moves this week to ramp up its ad efforts. On Wednesday, the popular photo messaging app started testing a new ad product that allows brand advertisers to attach branded articles containing text, images, and GIFs to their video ads in Live Stories and Discover channels. AT&T appears to be the first brand to try out this new product with a listicle of GIFs to promote its mobile live-streams for NCAA games. Earlier this week, Snapchat also updated its privacy policy to allow for ad targeting. Under the revised privacy policy, the Los Angeles-based company will be able to use customer data to customize ads going forward, increasing its capabilities for brand advertisers and catching up with the other large social networks.

What Brands Need To Do
Snapchat has been working on improving its ad products for the past few months. In February, the company struck a deal with Nielsen to bring some much-needed transparency to its ads. As Snapchat continues to diversify its ad products, brands will have better tools at their disposal to effectively reach the coveted demographics of young Millennials and teens on the app.

 

Source: Marketing Land & Digiday

Hearst Goes Vertical With New Mobile Video Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Hearst is no stranger to vertical video, as it has several subsidiaries, including Food Network and Cosmopolitan, running Discover channels on Snapchat, where vertical video is the standard format. Now, the publisher is working with select brands to create vertical video ads for its mobile sites. The new ad units are available on all Hearst sites and delivered via Hearst’s own Media OS platform. Ralph Lauren is the first brand to run a vertical video ad on Hearst sites.

What Brands Need To Do
As media consumption on mobile continues to grow, vertical videos are quickly gaining legitimacy as they incorporate viewing experiences native to the mobile platform. Snapchat, which propelled a number of brands including Coca-Cola and Dunkin’ Donuts to create vertical videos, says that vertical video ads have up to nine times more completed views than horizontal video ads on its app. Now, as Hearst brings vertical video ads from apps to the mobile web, it is time for brands to adopt this emerging mobile ad format and create videos that keep up with the changing user preference.

 

Source: Digiday

Allstate Goes Live For March Madness

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The annual NCAA college basketball tournament is currently underway, and like other major sports events, brands such as Allstate, Coca-Cola, and Kia are getting onboard with the March Madness via ad buys and sponsorships. Allstate, for example, is running ads in Snapchat’s March Madness Live Story and on Twitter. The real-time Twitter campaign features former astronaut Buzz Aldrin and longtime sportscaster Dick Vitale, who share their reactions to games in real time with sponsored tweets and live-streams on Periscope. Moreover, the teams are testing real-time social products as well, as 18 of the 68 teams competing in this year’s tournament tried out Facebook’s Live Video this week to rally their fans.

What Brands Need To Do
A big draw of sports events lies in an immediacy that requires the audience to watch live, which has made sports programming particularly resistant to the ongoing erosion of live ratings. Therefore, Allstate is smart to use live tweeting and Snapchat’s 24-hour-only content channel to lend a sense of that immediacy to its sponsored content and ads. With more and more media platforms exploring live video features, brands should have plenty of opportunities to try their hand at real-time marketing.

 

Source: AdWeek

 

SXSW 2016: Brands Tap Snapchat’s Sponsored Geofilters

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
When Snapchat opened up its Geofilters to brands for customization and purchase last month, we anticipated it to be heavily used at festivals and events to target the attendees. Now, unsurprisingly, a number of brands, including Samsung, Avocados From Mexico, Spotify, and AreaNet’s GW2 video game, are now using the Geofilters in Austin, TX, to reach the hundreds of thousands people in town to attend this year’s SXSW festival.  

What Brands Need To Do
Branded Geofilters offer a great tool to get your brand seen via user-generated social content, especially so at special events as they encourage participators to mark the occasion. As Snapchat continues to develop its ad products, brands should continue to experiment with different tools to find the best way to engage young consumers on Snapchat.

 

Source: AdWeek

 

MLB To Amplify Spring Training With Snapchat and Facebook’s Live Video

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The Major League Baseball (MLB) is embracing emerging media platforms to amplify the reach of its content. The league announced Friday that as part of a multi-year content deal with popular messaging app Snapchat, it will host a “Snapchat Day” later this month for its Spring Training games around the country, giving fans behind-the-scenes looks. Similarly, some teams, including the San Francisco Giants, Detroit Tigers, and Los Angeles Dodgers, are also experimenting with daily live broadcasts on Facebook to engage fans and drum up excitement using the Live Video feature Facebook just released for all users at the end of January.

What Brands Need To Do
The MLB is a leading force in bringing content into new media platforms to make it more accessible. Its internet and interactive branch, MLB Advanced Media, provides the backend infrastructure for a variety of OTT streaming services, including HBO Now, the WWE, WatchESPN, CBS Sportsline, and, of course, its own streaming service MLB.TV.  Now, the league is encouraging its players to embrace Snapchat and livestreaming as a way to bring fans closer to the game, something that most brands can learn a thing or two from.

 

Sources: Geekwire & Digiday

Snapchat Expands Live Stories To The Web For The Oscars

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat has always been mobile-only, in the sense that all its content and services live on mobile devices. But on Sunday, it broke with its tradition and extended its Live Stories for the Oscars to its website, so that people who are not using the popular messaging app can also watch its live content curation from the red carpet and ceremony. Just like Live Stories inside the app, the Oscars’ Live Story was only available online for 24 hours. But Snapchat says it is considering making more Live Stories for big events accessible via its website.

What Brands Need To Do
Making its content more accessible will no doubt help Snapchat amplify its content viewership and reach new audiences outside the app. For brands advertising on Snapchat, such increased visibility should come as a welcome development. Snapchat has been making an effort recently to appeal to brand advertisers, including the debut of on-demand custom Geofilters and a new partnership with Nielsen to improve its ad measurement, as well as enlisting Viacom’s help to sell more ads in its Discover content channels and Live Stories. As Snapchat continues to grow its audience and make its platform more brand-friendly, it remains a leading channel for brands to connect with today’s teen and young Millennial audiences.

 

Source: The Verge

Snapchat Inks Nielsen Deal To Offer Better Ad Measurement

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat has struck a deal with leading audience measurement firm Nielsen to give brand advertisers a better idea of how their ads are performing on Snapchat. With this new partnership, brands can get the third-party stats they need from Nielsen to gauge the performance of their video ads featured in the app’s Live Stories and Snapchat Discover, Snapchat’s content portal featuring a variety of publishers, such as MTV, CNN, Daily Mail, and ESPN. In addition, Snapchat has also reached agreements with ad-tech firms Innovid and Sizmek to further improve its ad measurement.

What Brands Need To Do
This partnership should bring more transparency to Snapchat ads, enabling brand advertisers to measure Snapchat campaigns through the lens of Nielsen Ad Ratings and compare the performance of their ads across different content portals. As Snapchat offers more clarity on its ad performance, brands looking to reach the app’s young-skewing users will have more data at their disposal, which they should utilize to adjust their Snapchat campaigns accordingly.

 

Source: AdWeek

Snapchat Launches On-Demand DIY Geofilters For Everyone

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat has opened up its location-based Geofilters for everyone, as it continues to explore revenue streams. Now any Snapchat user can design their own Geofilter, set the availability of time and location, and submit it for review. The turnaround time for review is about a day, and pricing starts at $5 and goes up based on the allocated time (as few as half an hour) and space covered (starting at  5,000 square feet).

What Brands Need To Do
In the age of ad avoidance (more on this in our Outlook 2016), branded Geofilters offer a great tool to get your brand seen via user-generated social content. Last July, McDonald’s became the first brand to create a branded Snapchat Geofilter for its stores. Now with DIY Geofilters widely available, brands can easily set up their own branded Geofilters to promote stores and special events, and experiment with different designs to find the best way to engage young consumers on Snapchat.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Viacom And Snapchat Join Forces With Multi-Year Ad Deal

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Old-school media giant Viacom and hot messaging app Snapchat have joined forces in a multi-yeara ds and content deal, the companies announced Tuesday. With the deal, Viacom will bundle the Snapchat ads with its own TV inventory and sell them independently. Moreover, Viacom will also add more channels to Snapchat’s Discover platform, and give Snapchat exclusive access to Viacom-sponsored events like the VMAs on MTV channel. Previously, Snapchat already surfaced content for Viacom-owned networks Comedy Central and MTV.

What Brands Need To Do
The new ad deal signals Snapchat’s continuous efforts to monetize its platform by expanding its ad offerings with Viacom’s help,whereas Viacom can leverage it to reach Snapchat’s young-skewing users, who are increasingly shunning traditional media in favor of digital and mobile videos. For brands seeking to connect with teens and young Millennials, working with Viacom to get on Snapchat may be a good option worth exploring.

 

Source: WSJ

Snapchat To Add App Install Ads In Discover And Live Stories

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat’s ad sales team has indicated it is considering introducing app install ads to its platform. This new ad product will likely be placed on Snapchat’s content portal Discover channels and Live Stories as video ads that redirect users to the app stores for iOS and Android. App install ads have been a key piece of mobile advertising, fueling Facebook’s ballooning ad revenue with nearly 300% year-by-year growth in Q2 last year. So it’s no surprise that Snapchat is also looking into this important ad product in order to grow its ad revenue.

What Brands Need To Do
For brands, Snapchat offers a great platform to reach young Millennials and teens on mobile. This new ad product can be useful for brands to drive downloads for their branded app and help increase awareness among key demos. In doing so, brands should also be conscious of the content channels they will be featured in, and pick the ones that fit with their messages best. For example, a bank advertising its personal banking app should consider putting the ads in Wall Street Journal’s Discover channel to match with their audience.

 

Source: The Information

Header image courtesy of Snapchat on YouTube