Digiday checks in with an anonymous publisher about their Snapchat strategy for their “Confessions” series, “trade anonymity for honesty to get an unvarnished look at the people, processes and problems inside the (advertising) industry.”

You may remember that Snapchat’s redesign they pushed out in February was wildly controversial, leading to widespread user disgruntlement and one very famous (former?) user to tweet them into a stock-price tumble.

So what does Digiday’s anonymous publisher think of Snapchat? What’s the strategy they’re employing?

They have a Snapchat team, but the content it creates is no longer exclusive to Snapchat

They’ve turned the Snapchat team into more of a multimedia team, producing vertical video content for a variety of platforms, not just for Snapchat. For example, if you are producing vertical videos, use those videos in Facebook and Instagram stories as well as on Snapchat Discover.

Snapchat is hard to monetize

That’s one of the main reasons they’ve turned their Snapchat team into a more all-purpose multimedia team.

Snapchat no longers pays production costs for shows

Producing shows can be expensive. If the platform is paying for the production, it’s obviously going to be a much more attractive channel for your content. However, they also said that the costs are pretty fixed, so at least you can budget and plan your content knowing how much it’s going to cost.

Vertical Video isn’t going anywhere, it just may not be on Snapchat

They plan to keep producing vertical video content, but Snapchat will be less of a priority as other platforms provide better opportunities to find viewers.

Further Reading:

Confessions of a Snapchat Discover publisher: We’re looking beyond the app – Digiday

Snapchat Will Now Have Unskippable Six-Second Ads – SocialChimp Blog

The Rise Of Vertical Video: How Top Brands Are Adopting A New Content Format – Forbes

8 mobile marketing winners and losers from Q1 – Mobile Marketer

 

John