Dive Brief:

• The Washington Post and Snapchat announced that the publisher will be bringing what it calls “experiential storytelling” to breaking news on its Discover channel as reported by Adweek.
• The move makes the Post the first Snapchat Discover channel publisher to update multiple times per day for users in the U.S., Canada and the UK.
• The Washington Post has already started posting news on the channel and the plan is for hourly updates on the latest news.

Dive Insight:

Both The Washington Post and Snapchat have been making news with additions and updates. The Post, like many publishers, has been actively looking for new avenues for revenue and its new Discover channel should offer opportunities here as well as in exploring innovative ways to deliver news content. Consumers are already getting a significant portion of their news from social media and by leveraging Snapchat's unique combination of mixed media for breaking news, the publisher is likely looking to introduce a new generation of readers to the brand. 

Just last week, the publisher announced it was launching a new branded content ad unit called “Post Cards” with a high-level of personalization that dynamically served ads with the specific content type — such as text, video, infographic or gallery — preferred by the viewer on the device type they are seeing the ad.

In advance of the expected March IPO of Snapchat’s parent company Snap Inc., the platform has been adding and enhancing features for its users including original TV-like content and expanding the Discover portal to around 40 publications after a previous policy of highly limiting those slots.