SXSW Interactive Day 1 Takeaways
Day 1 of SXSW was ride for sure. Here are some big takeaways from several panels and conversations from the day.
Read MoreDay 1 of SXSW was ride for sure. Here are some big takeaways from several panels and conversations from the day.
Read MoreSnapchat is working to do a couple pretty interesting things, at least for brands. It’s starting to place ads within the ‘Our Story’ feature on the platform. Our Story aggregates snaps from multiple users related to an event or a place in an updated feed of content. Some brands are now able able to sponsor different ‘Our Stories’ and pay to have their content displayed within those collections.
Samsung has already partnered with Snapchat for The American Music Awards when it placed branded content in the Our Story feed related to the social TV event. The content sponsored by Samsung included behind-the-scenes looks at the event, which one could argue Snapchat’s users would be less than interested in compared to content shared by celebrities, but it was an experiment. This sponsored content joins Snapchat’s first foray into advertising, which was a 20-second video marked as “Sponsored” to promote a movie.
Snapchat is not stopping there, however. It is in the process of courting publishers like CNN, BuzzFeed, ESPN and others to create content exclusively for the Snapchat audience. Snapchat isn’t interested in being just a messaging service. It wants to be a news and information destination.
Read MoreFacebook is now working very hard to build deeper relationships with publishers, especially after making updates to its News Feed algorithm to feature high-quality timely content. Facebook's offering publishers a more optimal user experience, built for mobile with faster loading times, if they start publishing content that lives within Facebook's mobile app and is then hosted on Facebook's servers. Publishers would then be able to serve ads sold by Facebook with shared revenue. Instead of driving to their websites, they'd create content to keep users on Facebook.
That is quite the offer. Facebook has become the preeminent news source for millions of people. It brings 1.3 billion users to brands, publishers, celebrities and anyone else who wants to get a message out there. This paired with Facebook users' strong mobile usage and Facebook's mastery of user experience clearly make it an attractive platform for investing time, energy and, of course, dollars.
All of this raises questions for advertisers as well as publishers when they look at the role of any platform they use to reach their audiences be it Facebook, Twitter, a microsite, a blog or anything else. Who owns the relationship? What is the end game? Who ultimately has control of the data?
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