Dive Brief:

• Snapchat is no longer auto-advancing users’ stories, and instead is enabling them to create a Playlist of stories they want to watch, the company announced. 
• One result of the move is that Snapchat is offering marketers post-roll ad units, according to a report in TechCrunch. Previously Snapchat ran mid-roll ads in between auto-advance stories, and those units are still available to reach users who watch multiple stories.
• Snapchat’s new Story Playlist was created in response to user feedback against the auto-advance feature.

Dive Insight:

While Snapchat has been growing quickly, it is still a relatively young social media company, with the latest news pointing to how it is continuing to fine-tune the user experience and build out revenue-generating opportunities for brands. That Snapchat is reacting to user feedback and the competition suggests it is trying to remain nimble and not fall prey to the mistakes of some of its competitors, who failed to keep up with a quickly evolving space. 

Reporting from TechCrunch pointed out that the shift from auto-advancing story playlists to giving users more control over what they viewed was a response from Snapchat to Instagram Stories, a feature that heavily borrowed from the Snapchat user experience and immediately became a popular aspect of the Instagram UX.

Snapchat has been notoriously tough for marketers, but that has been changing this year as it has been adding targeting and measurement capabilities in advertising on the app. It’s also been actively adding new ad formats to help marketers reach its user base that heavily skews Gen Z and millennial. It’s been widely speculated that most of these marketer-friendly accommodations have been made in advance of Snapchat’s expected IPO which is currently valued at north of $25 billion.

Overall, marketers should welcome the new post-roll ad units as another way to tap into Snapchat’s user base and get in front of Gen Z.