Dive Brief:
- Snapchat is helping out its Discover portal publisher partners by redesigning the basic user interface, doing away with media logo icons and bringing on magazine-like cover images to entice readers to the content, according to Digiday.
- Venture Beat first reported on the coming redesign a couple of weeks ago, speculating the new look might arrive as early as June 7 with a tiled feed a la Instagram.
- According to reports, only a small number of Snapchat's 100 million daily users visit the portal, thereby missing out on the majority of the advertising served up by the social media app.
Dive Insight:
An anonymous publishing source told Digiday about the new look, “The big redesign is going to let us create cover images, and pull out individual content and point to the content that’s inside, instead of just our logo.”
Snapchat has made a number of tweaks to the Discover portal since its launch more than a year ago as a separate page within the app, including making it easier for users to find the content. It has both shifted the line-up of publisher partners and expanded the number of partners to its current state of around 20. The messaging app has also rolled out a number of ad formats based around the portal and made changes such as allowing publishers to link Discover content outside of the app.
Snapchat has a reputation as a difficult to use platform for marketers. With its measurement and targeting issues, and ad units like Sponsored Lenses that have a high barrier to entry due to steep prices, the messaging app has had to make concessions to make friendly with marketing partners as it grows its ad business. Its publisher partners will be actively waiting to see if the redesign brings in more viewers, but marketers should be just as interested because a more popular Discover portal could potentially usher in a wider range of advertising options on the app.
