Snapchat: Making it Easier for Users to Discover
Originally published at linkedin.com on July 14, 2015.
If you’ve downloaded Snapchat’s latest update, you might have noticed that your Stories menu now features a more interactive slide bar for Snapchat’s Discover (as well as the Live tab).
While the old, full-screen Discover menu is still two swipes left of your main screen, it is now being promoted more directly through these shortcuts on top of your contacts’ stories.
The buttons operate the same as they would on the old Discover menu screen, so why have two sections devoted to Discover specifically?
The answer is simple: to maximize the user’s interaction within the app and increase ad revenue. There are over 100 million active users daily, yet only around 5% watch Discover content. Even then, it’s 5 million viewers per day, but still an enormous audience that Snapchat is not taking advantage of.
For those not in the 5%, Discover is “a fun new way to explore Stories from different editorial perspectives. It is composed of up to 11 unique channels, one for each publisher… These daily editions include 5–10 hand-curated stories that refresh every 24 hours.” These publishers include Comedy Central, DailyMail, Cosmopolitan, ESPN, CNN, People, Food Network, National Geographic, Vice, Warner Music, Yahoo! News, and its own Snapchat Channel. Basically, it aims to satisfy all your comedy, sports, entertainment, or any other variant-of-news need with just a tap.
So Discover is basically Snapchat’s form of generating ad revenue; it had to make money from somewhere. According to Recode’s Kurt Wagner, Snapchat is running ads at $100 CPM, that is $100 per 1,000 views. That is double the amount one would pay for a well-established video publishing company. With these high rates, it is no wonder why Snapchat is now pushing to maximize its Discover tab usage and taking it from the depths of its second screen and transition it slowly into the right screen.
Snapchat is still revolutionizing itself into what it truly wants to be: less than a month ago, another update got rid of Snapchat’s trademark “Hold to view” feature, replacing it with a tap. Snapchat has a long way to go before finally settling down into what it truly wants to be known for, and its updates will bring a small (but radical) change as to how we use this selfie-driven app.
Got any thoughts to add? Tweet me @juliangumbo or comment below!
Julian Gamboa is a UC Berkeley graduate with a focus on marketing. Julian was selected as a LinkedIn Top Voice for Marketing and #Social Media (2017) and a Course Instructor of the marketing and digital publishing course Digital Marketing Today at the Haas School of Business. He is also the founder of Digiviewpoint, a millennial publishing account.
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