If you’ve cut the cord on traditional TV, there’s another place to watch scripted shows: Snapchat.
More people are moving away from non-streaming network and cable TV programming, and Snap looks to take advantage of it. It recently launched a set of original shows, called “Snap Originals,” which are meant to entice younger consumers to watch content that is TV-quality, but not on a TV screen.
Expect these shows to look and feel very different than other mobile video. The plot structure will focus on hooking users upfront, the production cues will move more quickly and there are a ton of split-screens and motion graphics.
The serialized shows will have new episodes daily, and include a documentary series called “Growing Up is a Drag,” about the coming-of-age of teenage drag stars, produced by Bunim/Murray, the production company behind the hit reality television show “Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”Snap said the episodes will be fast-paced for mobile viewing and as short as five minutes long, with each show having a profile page where viewers can easily find each episode.
The shows will also employ Snapchat features such as the app’s augmented reality feature, called “lenses,” to increase viewer engagement.
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The move is ultimately another way Snap is trying to bolster both its user numbers and the time users spend on Snapchat.
Snap Originals comes as the company (SNAP, +5.51%) continues to hemorrhage money and watch its shares slip. As of this writing, Snap’s stock price is hovering at $6.86, near its all-time low of $6.81. It’s also down far from Snap’s high of $21.22.
Reuters reported:
Michael Nathanson, an analyst with MoffettNathanson, said in a note on Tuesday that Snap was falling “woefully short” of its goal to be profitable, estimating the company will lose more than $1.5 billion next year.Snap shares declined almost 3.0 percent on Tuesday after Nathanson’s note.
The move might be working for the struggling social media platform—and it might also be a sign for brand managers to not yet give up on Snapchat.
… [A] lot of people are watching the shows Snapchat already has, says Snap’s VP of Original Content Sean Mills — enough that the company sees value in creating even more of them.… Mills says the amount of time people spend watching shows each month has tripled since January, though Snap declined to share how much time that actually is. That makes it hard to determine just how valuable shows are to the company. Snap shares audience numbers for some of its most popular shows — ESPN’s SportsCenter remake on Snapchat has 17 million unique viewers a month and NBC’s Stay Tuned news show has five million unique viewers per day, Snap says. But those metrics aren’t comparable to traditional television ratings which, again, makes them hard to value.
As Snap offers features, including these original shows, to keep users on its app for longer, it can continue to offer marketing partners richer data.
The company shared in its latest earnings report that daily active user count was down, but there are two bright spots for advertisers: Snapchat reported more than 100 million monthly active users who spend an average of more than 30 minutes per day on the app. And a new report from eMarketer indicated that adult U.S. users will use the app 27 minutes per day, ahead of Instagram’s 26 minutes.“Snapchatters are 20 percent more likely to make a purchase on their mobile device than a non-Snapchatter,” [Snapchat’s global consumer insights lead Amy Moussavi] says. “This community is mobile first.”
Adweek reported that Snap’s newest data report revealed when Snapchat users like to shop, showcasing important behaviors marketers can use to better target them to increase purchases.
Snap’s announcement also highlights the changing nature of TV viewing—as well as video content online.
With its new content push, Snap doesn’t want to just duplicate TV shows or Netflix binges, though. For whatever position its stock might be in, Snap wants to do something more ambitious: Push the medium of storytelling forward, leveraging its AR breakthroughs and social platform to do so.
Fortune reported:
Snap Originals will try to capitalize on an increasing push for mobile video across the social media space. Instagram, one of Snapchat’s biggest competitors, has been especially bullish on mobile video. Its IGTV service aims at allowing users to share longer-form videos and for brands to create their own programming.
Video important for all social media
Both Instagram and YouTube have been courting influencers to create more video content with new features and sponsorship models aimed at taking advantage of the growing wave of video-heavy digital strategies.
Research firm EMarketer projects that ad spending on digital video will grow nearly 30% to US$27.82bil (RM115.76bil) in 2018. Snapchat is projected to have about 1% of that pie with US$397mil (RM1.65bil) in ad revenue this year, up 17% from 2017, according to EMarketer.
However, Snap’s short, digestible videos might not work as well as longer videos that viewers deem valuable enough to sit and watch.
The Guardian’s Hannah Davies wrote:
… [T]he main question here is whether Snapchat’s insistence on sticking with hyper-short formats will pay off. With podcasts more popular than ever – most of them half an hour plus – and long-form journalism enjoying a resurgence, it seems content-makers and audiences alike are actively trying to move away from a swipeable, easily dismissable model of culture. The brevity of Snapchat’s shows could be seen to convey a sense of accessibility, but may also reinforce the idea that young people have the attention span of gnats.
“The data we look at is showing a widening user base, although one which is collectively reducing its time on the platform,” said Brian Wieser, a senior research analyst at Pivotal Research Group, in an email to CNBC.“Our take is that it is not too late for management to find ways to reverse recent usage trends and generally improve monetization regardless of those usage trends. With ongoing experimentation, we have some faith that they should be able to do both.”
As Snap struggles to find the sweet spot between short content that users can easily click on without too much of a commitment and longer-form content that requires a high value proposition, brand managers should also weigh out and test their content to make sure it’s delivering on business goals and the bottom line.
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