Snapchat has redesigned its ‘Discover’ section, merging it with ‘LIve Stories’ to make it easier for media partners, such as BuzzFeed and Red Bull, to share content online. The Discovery channels work as mini mobile magazines, with animations, sound and text. Media partners include the Wall Stret Journal, Mashable and Cosmopolitan. Ads are sloted between […]
Snapchat has redesigned its ‘Discover’ section, merging it with ‘LIve Stories’ to make it easier for media partners, such as BuzzFeed and Red Bull, to share content online.
The Discovery channels work as mini mobile magazines, with animations, sound and text. Media partners include the Wall Stret Journal, Mashable and Cosmopolitan.
Ads are sloted between the pages and appear as part of the content, much like an animated magazine ad.
However, Discover is currently not the most popualr oart of Snapchat. While some 150 million people visit Snapchat daily, a Discover channel may only get 1 million views a day, people familiar with the matter have said.
Snapchat is trying to fix that by intergrating Discover channels with the app’s Live Stories, which often draw tens of millions of viewers for popular events.
Live Stories consists of user contributions from events around the world and are often more popular than publishers’ stories.
Live Stories previously had their own section at the top of Snapchat’s app, which gave them great prominence. The area just for Live Stories is now lower on the app and links to content produced by media companies that were previously promoted with small logos now appear with bigger logos, images and short headlines.
The new design, which has rolled out this week, lets publishers include an image and a headline to promote each day’s ‘Live Story’.
Snapchat and media partners split revenue from the ads on their Discover channels. The company runs ads on Live Stories too, but not on stories created by individual users.
In addition, users can now subscribe to publisher channels, which will place unread stories below updates from their friends on the Stories page. All publishers will still appear on the Discover page whether subscribed to or not.
Two dozen publishers have been working closely with Snapchat to provide content to its Discover section. Those companies have been seeking changes that would give them more consistent viewership. Individual Live Stories, whether about a music festival or the latest NBA Finals game, could collect tens of millions of viewers.
Joanna Delaney Digital Strategy Analyst at Digital Strategy Consulting, said: “The merging of Live Stories and the Discover section is set to attract more clicks from users as it lets media publishers put the content that is performing best front and centre on the users home screen, opposed to behind a logo in the old design”
