Snapchat has recently redesigned its Stories page to make it easier to discover publishers’ content and perhaps boost their viewership, reports the Wall Street Journal. With the new redesign, the 20 or so publishers on Snapchat – including WSJ, Food Network, Buzzfeed and People – can now add an image and headline to promote their top stories of the day. Users can also “subscribe” to the publishers’ channels to get those stories placed under the updates from their friends.
On the new Stories page, publisher content will sit alongside Live Stories, a collection of curated Snaps. Content from a select group of publishers also appears on Snapchat’s Discover page, along with Live Stories, which are contributed by Snapchat users around the world. This will make it easier for users to discover the publishers’ stories.
Why the redesign? The Verge says subscriptions will give Snapchat another way to measure the success of a publisher’s channel. While the subscriptions are free, by boosting viewership to publishers’ content, Snapchat will increase the viewership of ads sold on those channels. Since Snapchat gets a share of publishers’ ad revenue, the company could also see a boost in revenue.
The redesign rolled out on Tuesday, so it will be months before its success can be measured. That said, some publishers are already experiencing success with the platform. For example, in a January 2016 article, the IB Times reported that Cosmopolitan’s Snapchat Discover channel had an average of 19 million views per month, while its website had an average of 20 million unique visitors per month.
Insider Take:
According to Zacks in May, the privately-owned, four-year-old company Snapchat has been valued at $16 billion and, after a new round of funding, it could be worth as much as $19 billion. Since 2015, the company has spoken about its plans for an IPO, but no timeline has been revealed yet.
In the meantime, in addition to equity funding, Snapchat is making money from advertising – charging a minimum of $750,000 for a day of advertising! Because the company is targeting the much coveted millennial audience, despite the price tag, Snapchat has attracted buyers like McDonald’s, Samsung and Macy’s, says Zacks.
To fuel its growth, Snapchat must continue to grow and evolve with its audience which means making changes to the platform to adapt to its users’ needs. In this case, Snapchat is serving two audiences – publishers who want eyeballs and users who want an easier way to find the content they want. Publishers will be the final judge on whether or not the redesign benefits them enough to warrant their investment in Snapchat stories.
