Unlike Facebook, Snapchat is Making Moves to Court Publishers

With Facebook’s announcement last week detailing their move away from publishers, many businesses could be turning to Snapchat soon for refuge.

On January 18, Snapchat’s platform content head Mike Su emailed all publishers with an introduction to Josh Stone, the app’s new manager of media partnerships, whose role will include managing Discover publishers day by day. In the email, Su writes:

As Evan [Spiegel, CEO of Snap,] mentioned on our previous earnings call, content is one of our top three priorities in 2018, and your success on Snapchat is at the heart of that. So we’re going to push harder and be more proactive with helping you succeed on Snapchat. This means finding more ways we can work together, more ways to support your business goals, and being more proactive with sharing insights and best practices to help your teams improve content quality and reach more of your audience, while continuing the support the team has already been providing,

About 3 years ago, Snapchat unveiled the new “Discover” section of the app, which was a place for publishers like People, CNN and Food Network to post content that users could engage with. Snapchat has since tweaked some of it’s terms with the Discover page, attempting to steer publishers toward making TV-like programs rather than text-based content. Even so, Snapchat is obviously leaning toward prioritizing publishers.

What does this mean for publishers?

This plan has been in the works for Snapchat since last year, so it’s a happy coincidence for publishers that this platform is focused on prioritizing them in the future, rather than stepping away. From a user perspective, Snapchat may begin to look different in the coming months, with much more content to engage with.

Read the email in full:

Discover Publishers!

I want to reach out and introduce myself and give you a quick update on some exciting things we have to kick off 2018!

My Role
I’ve joined [Snap vp of content] Nick Bell’s team to lead Platform Content, which includes Publisher Stories, as well as Product. As Evan mentioned on our previous earnings call, content is one of our top three priorities in 2018, and your success on Snapchat is at the heart of that.

So we’re going to push harder and be more proactive with helping you succeed on Snapchat. This means finding more ways we can work together, more ways to support your business goals, and being more proactive with sharing insights and best practices to help your teams improve content quality and reach more of your audience, while continuing the support the team has already been providing.

Josh Stone
As part of this effort, I’m also excited to share that Josh Stone, whom many of you have worked with in the past, will be taking on a newly created role as Manager of Media Partnerships. This role was specifically created to work with our partners to deepen our strategic relationships, understand your needs and concerns, and figure out ways we can expand our partnership. As you know, Josh has been here since the early days of Snap and was integral in launching the Discover platform, so his deep knowledge and relationships across the company, his insights into the platform, and his understanding of the publishing landscape makes him uniquely suited for this role.

Publisher Summit
I’m also excited to let you know that we will soon announce our first ever Publisher Summit. While specific dates and details will follow, the goal of the summit is to provide updates on our product and platform, share best practices, hear feedback, as well as provide a networking opportunity among our publishing partners. We’ll be shaping the agenda in the coming weeks, so if there are specific things you’d like to see to get the most out of it, I would love to hear your ideas!

These moves are designed to double down on our commitment to all of you, and we believe will set us up well to help make 2018 a great year for content on Snapchat. Really excited to get to know you all and find ways we can better support you. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions, and stay tuned for more details on the summit!

Best,
Mike

Further Reading

Instagram adds a feature for businesses, still no chronological timeline (Mashable)

Chase is using memes and GIFs to bring millennials to Zelle (Digiday)

Why It Can Pay to Get Links from Domains that Don’t Always Rank Highly (Moz)

Lauren Petermeyer

Lauren is the Editor-in-Chief of Digital Insights Journal, as well as Editor-in-Chief of Morethanglam.com. She works as a Manager of Digital Strategy and Planning for 301 Digital Media, all while having an unhealthy obsession with potato chips, good wine, and Drake.