Dive Brief:
- This week, the London Telegraph newspaper and publisher Vice UK started posting political news and analysis on Snapchat Discover, the image-messaging company’s platform for professional content, ahead of the June 8 voting day, Digiday reported.
- The Telegraph will publish at least 10 stories at 5 p.m. each day, including election coverage, sports, lifestyle, entertainment and international news. Vice UK’s six-person team will post at least 10 stories a day at 6 a.m., including political news.
- Snapchat has 10 million daily users in the U.K., according to Digiday, compared with 166 million average monthly users worldwide. The publications join Cosmopolitan UK, The Economist, Sky News, The Sun, Daily Mail and BuzzFeed to post specially curated content on Snapchat Discover.
Dive Insight:
Publishers continue to experiment with publishing on Snapchat’s platform as a way of reaching an audience that’s not available on Facebook or Instagram. Research from analytics firm App Annie in May found that 35% of Snapchat’s U.S. users cannot be reached by Facebook, while 46% don’t check into Instagram on a given day. Facebook has responded to that challenge by copying Snapchat’s popular Stories feature that lets users post video clips for a 24-hour period.
The Telegraph, which has 23.9 million unique users a month, has focused on publishing content on platforms like Snapchat’s after making its website paywall more restrictive last November in an attempt to drive its subscriber base. Its "open layer" strategy lets readers see 85% of its content for free, while 15% is behind a paywall. While publishers can’t sell subscriptions through Snapchat, the Telegraph is seeking younger, on-the-go audiences that are willing to swipe through the Discover section to access its bite-size content.
Vice has been an early adopter of publishing on Snapchat as a global launch partner for the Discover platform two years ago, according to Variety. In March, Vice Media struck a deal to produce shows exclusively for Snapchat. The first show will be “Hungry Hearts with Action Bronson,” a dating series hosted by rapper-chef Action Bronson. Vice's new U.K. channel pushes the company into its fourth international market on Discover, following the U.S., Germany and France, and it will continue its programming covering culture and news following the U.K. election.
