For the last few years, companies have had trouble figuring out what exactly to do with Snapchat. Gray-haired CMOs knew that kids these days love Snapchat, but couldn’t quite figure out how to monetize that.
“That’s the thing that puts dog ears on pictures, right? Is there money in that? How?”
At first, they tried putting their brands on Snapchat and saw varying levels of success. Next, they were told that Snapchat was already dead thanks to Instagram dealing them a deathblow. But, Snapchat not only endured, but they also evolved. They now reach 90% of 13-to-24-year-olds in the U.S.
So how do you get a piece of that traffic?
Snapchat’s New Gaming Platform Presents New Opportunities
Snapchat recently unveiled their roadmap for future innovation and it actually has a lot of advertisers very excited as they can finally see how to take advantage of Snapchat’s astounding traffic and usage.
The first announcement that caught their ears was a new ad platform called the Snap Audience Network, which would help advertisers to potentially reach a larger group than their previous campaigns in Snapchat alone.
However, some people are seeing even more potential in the gaming platform that Snap is introducing. Advertisers can now appear in front of young eyes for 6 seconds in non-skippable, 6-second video ads on popular games like “Bitmoji Party,” which is an original Snap game that lets users play as their personalized Bitmoji avatars.
The gaming will not end there, as Snapchat will soon also expand their offerings to third-party games.
How Will This Play Out?
Right now Snapchat is in a precarious space. They’re just starting to rebuild their following after an arguably disastrous UX redesign that had users Snapping “WTF.”
Again, this came only a few months after many business experts had pretty much given the social sharing giant it’s last rites after they saw a drop in traffic. They’re in a delicate space and need to keep evolving.
They need to tread lightly, as not to alienate their very young customer base that is wary of intrusive ads.
Other mobile gaming platforms have had success monetizing with ad space, such as Words With Friends. However, most of those games were able to introduce ads in a non-intrusive way, because there is a natural pause or time gap between turns. Most of Snapchat’s games don’t have that type of space to fill right now, so there is a real danger of alienating users.
If either of these two advertising platforms doesn’t work, the first place you will hear about it is directly from the users. Their complaints about “these new ad things” will be heard across the social-sphere. A sharp drop in Snapchat’s traffic may follow.
However, properly executed, this could finally be the “Unlock Snapchat Money” cheat code that advertisers have been searching for.
