NBC, Snapchat partner on Golden Globes highlights show

Brief:

NBC partnered with Snapchat on a highlights show for the 76th Annual Golden Globe awards that aired yesterday (Jan. 6), according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Snapchat streamed the show in its Discover section. NBC's dedicated video team clipped highlights from the show and formatted them for vertical viewing on a tablet or mobile device.
The "Golden Globes Highlights" program was the first time Snapchat aired an awards highlights show, per The Hollywood Reporter.

Insight:

NBC and Snapchat extended their partnership with the highlights show for the Golden Globes, demonstrating how the broadcaster can add to the telecast with additional content on social media platforms. NBCUniversal, a unit of Comcast and parent of NBC, invested $500 million in Snap, which runs Snapchat, when the company went public almost two years ago. Since then, the two companies have worked together in various capacities to create original content and distribute programming to reach larger audiences. NBC News' twice-daily program on Snapchat, "Stay Tuned," has doubled its audience in the past year and now reaches 5 million unique viewers a day, per Variety.

Snapchat has sought to bolster its video programming to appeal to its core audience of young adults and teens. The company in October introduced 12 original shows amid a push into exclusive video content. "Snap Originals" will let viewers swipe up on their smartphone screens to open virtual "show portals" and step inside augmented reality (AR) scenes from the shows.

Snapchat, as it continues to rival Facebook's Instagram, is also seeking to ward off competition from TikTok, the video-sharing platform that has become a global hit among young consumers on mobile. Snapchat last month introduced Lens Challenges that urge viewers to post videos of themselves using face filters in singalongs — mimicking the key functionality of TikTok in order to keep users on the Snapchat app with trendy mobile features.

More than one-fourth (28.3%) of U.S. marketers were expected to use Snapchat for marketing purposes, compared with 69.2% for Instagram, according to an estimate by researcher eMarketer. The company expected Snapchat's U.S. ad revenues to grow 18.7% to more $660 million in 2018 from the prior year, while Instagram would nearly double sales to $6.12 billion.