The feature has been successful enough for Snapchat that it’s in talks with more companies about adding them to the feature. Buzzfeed, Vox, and iHeartRadio are some of the companies that are slated to join the list of Discover publishers. Other Internet media companies like Mic and Refinery29 are in talks with Snapchat about being added to the feature as well.
At the same time, however, its roster of current Discover publishers is also undergoing a shakeup: Warner Music and Yahoo are on their way out, and Food Network’s future is uncertain.
The company launched Discover in January as a way of monetizing heavy use of the app by teenagers. It succeeded in convincing a number of media companies to enter into agreements to have their content shown in Discover because of the lucrative advertising target that is the teenage demographic. This experiment also proved that Snapchat could be a lot more than a mere photo and video-messaging app that has also courted controversy for the prevalence of teen sexting.
Initially, demand for ad buys on Snapchat were extremely high, but they’ve recently come down to an amount that’s more appropriate for industry rates.
At the very least, this demand from additional publishers suggests that Snapchat’s Discover experiment has piqued the curiosity of media companies that want to reach the teen demographic, which is sometimes hard to pin down in a specific location. Publishers that Recode spoke with were, nonetheless, mixed in their opinion of Discover’s usefulness. Some have been happy with the traffic and engagement received from having their content featured in Discover, but some have been disappointed.
Becoming a publisher on Discover means a heavy commitment from media companies. Some who’ve partnered with Snapchat to use this feature have had to hire full-time editors to specifically produce content for Discover.
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