@Snapchat does Advertising with Snapchat Discovery and 100 Million Strong Advertising

“We won’t put advertisements in your personal communication – things like Snaps or Chats. That would be totally rude. We want to see if we can deliver an experience that’s fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted. It’s nice when all of the brilliant creative minds out there get our attention with terrific content”

Snapchat's Press Release announcing to users that they're placing advertising in the Recent Updates section of the Snapchat Apps

Well, that’s rather quick of them, as I knew they couldn’t hold out for very long!

Snapchat, after the hack-that-wasn’t spectacle involving some 200,000 teenie bopper nudes “leaked” by  Third-party websites Snapsave and Snapsaved aka the Snappening as explained my blog article entitled “200,000 Naked Teenagers in Snapchat’s Snappening – How Teenagers Private Parts got swiped by Child Pornography Admins in the Thomas Crowne Affair”, is again in the news!

This time it is for the fact that they plan to launch an Advertising Service to send random advertisement in the Recent Updates section of Snapchat as reported in the article “Snapchat's advertising push begins”, published by Ian Sherr by October 17, 2014 3:50 PM PDT, CNET News.

This announcement was made in a Press Release dated Friday October 17^th 2014 on their Snapchat Blog entitled “Advertising on Snapchat”, published October 17, 2014 viewed by Lindsworth Deer, Snapchat Blog.

Snapchat by the Numbers – Huge potential for reaching Teenagers with Products

However, it didn’t make mention of the name of the advertising platform being Snapchat Discovery; that’s the WSJ’s source as per their article “News and Ads to Debut on Snapchat”, published Aug. 19, 2014 6:25 p.m. ET By GILLIAN TAN, DOUGLAS MACMILLAN and JACK MARSHALL, The Wall Street Journal.

Apparently Snapchat's Chief Executive Evan Spiegel had been meeting Advertising Executives in a bid to wrangle lucrative advertising contracts for their Snapchat Discovery Advertising Platform according to the Wall Street Journal's source.

Snapchat does have a very strong arguement, as according to ComScore estimates, the monthly usage of their ephemeral App has reached some 27 million per month with some 100 million active users, mainly Teenagers (ages 13 to 18), who may see him as a younger, more trustworthy face compared to the Wall-Street Controlled and Privacy-snafu prone Facebook.

During his presentations to those executives, the source to the Wall Street Journal pointed out that Snapchat's Chief Executive Evan Spiegel used a slide presentation to drive home his point for them investing their advertising dollars in their new Snapchat Discovery platform that would target the Teenage demographic i.e. 13 to 17 years old. According to marketing news site Digiday:

1.      700 million self-destructing snaps per day, some nude and some fully clothed

2.      50% of their user base is Teenagers (aged 13 to 17)

3.      14 times a day is the average time a user check their Snapchat account on their smartphone

So what form will these advertisements take? I’ll explain this while I undress myself to get naked and in the frame of mind to type what comes next, dear reader!

Snapchat does Advertising – Snapchat Discovery is really Snapchat stories but for Advertising

Most likely the advertisements will be single image or video ads that will Appear in the Recent updates section as the Press Release reports based on the first set of ads thus far on Monday October 20^th 2014 as reported in the article “Snapchat messaging App gets its first ad... and it's very creepy”, published Monday 20 October 2014 11.03 BST by Stuart Dredge, The UK Guardian.

This will be a lot like Snapchat Stories, a feature Snapchat launched in October 2013 to make your snaps into a kind of collage that lasts for 24 hours as explained in “Snapchat lets photos live for a day with 'Stories'”, published October 3, 2013 8:32 AM PDT by Lance Whitney, CNET News.

According to the Snapchat Press Release, these ads are designed to be non-invasive and there is no plan in the future to filter them into the Chat or nudies ….er….I mean Snaps section.

This means Snapchat is avoiding the popular form of Native Ads, where ads are interwoven into the content so that they’re always in your face as per the promise of newly minted COO (Chief Operation Officer) Emily White as suggested by the article “Snapchat COO Emily White Wants To Make Ads Incredibly Obvious To Users”, published OCT. 23, 2014, 2:39 PM by ALYSON SHONTELL, Business Insider.

Instead, like Snapchat Stories, the ads will appear in the Recent Updates Section also last as long if not viewed or disappear once acknowledged by the Snapchatter. Advertising but not in your face and the freedom to ignore them; sounds almost too good to be true, but so far, that’s been the case!

Snapchat’s Self-Efficacy – The proof of the Snapchat Pudding is in the Tasting

This is another ballsy move by the company that reportedly turned down US$3 billion from Facebook back in November 2013 to buy them out as reported in the article “Snapchat said to rebuff $3 billion offer from Facebook”, published November 13, 2013 11:03 AM PST by Jennifer Van Grove, CNET News.

Their self-efficacy is now being rewarded, as many aren’t fond of Facebook’s lack of privacy, which would explain why Poke got the cold shoulder and their latest effort Slingshot as described in my blog article entitled “Facebook's Creative Labs Division debuts Slingshot – The Paper Man need Friends Nearby + Firechat + Group Mini-Games = Original Design”, has morphed into a mere Snapchat Clone.

 
Even Microsoft Xim, basically a practical spinoff of Microsoft Fuse Labs experimentation with Conscious Shared Slideshow Experience, is better than Facebook Slingshot as described in my blog article entitled “Facebook's Creative Labs Division debuts Slingshot – The Paper Man need Friends Nearby + Firechat + Group Mini-Games = Original Design”.

So now I’ve cleared that up, how good are these ads anyway?

Whatever form they take, be they videos of images with build in hyperlinks, they better be cooler than the drab ones on Facebook as opined in the article “Snapchat Ads Are Probably Cooler Than Facebook’s, But Still Not Cool”, published October 18, 2014 by Jordan Crook, TechCrunch.

Time will tell if we start hearing Stories about Snapchat Discovery peeps buying products because of ads they saw on a Nudie App called Snapchat.

Oh snap, I just remembered….! Dear reader, tell me what you think of the Ads in the comments below! Cool or is Snapchat a tool?

Cheerio Snapchatters!