Snapchat redesigns its look in order to attract more audience for brands and online publishers. The messaging app aims to boost its traffic with the new "subscribe button."
Adweek reports that Snapchat's new design mashes up Discover with creative headlines, Live Stories, subscribe buttons and new placements striving to help publishers gather big audiences. Around 20 big publishers produce daily content for Discover with Snapchat, including IGN, Hearst, CNN and Vox Media.
Major publishers allocate exclusive resources and teams to produce content with Snapchat. For instance, MTV has a dedicated team of 11 staffers for Snapchat, while IGN has a four person Snapchat crew that take care of the video game publisher's content.
As part of a revenue-sharing program, Snapchat requires media brands to sell ads against their content. This is in exchange of reaching millions of daily views.
Since people primarily use the app to communicate, there are some publishers complaining that they only receive a fraction of Snapchat's traffic. According to Bloomberg, the messaging app is visited by an estimated number of 150 million users daily.
With the redesign of its look, Snapchat has the goal to get users to view more content from publishers. Live Story and Discover content is positioned now in a scrollable section at the top of the page.
Since Discover launched in January 2015, the only way for publishers to drive readership was relying on small, circle icons. The change in Snapchat design allows now media brands to create custom images and miniheadlines to make users interested in clicking through on content.
The publishers' homepage features a new tilelike design, but the content will continue to be shown on the homepage as well as in a separate section of the app. A "subscribe" button similar to that already on YouTube, Twitter and Facebook was also added for media partners to help them grow audiences.
Publishers are still unclear if the Snapchat changes will boost their viewers, but many hope that is a step in the right direction. For instance, head of programming at Tastemade, Oren Katzeff, said that the Snapchat change allows publishers to take things to the next level by showcasing some of the content that is performed well.
