Snap, which has a user base that isn’t growing and a stock that’s near an all-time low, could use a jolt to its business. So on Thursday, it announced a new revenue stream with the help of some well-known publishers like CNN, Cosmo and NBC News.
Snapchat, which needs a business boost, is creating a new revenue stream with help from some publishers
CNN, NBC and Cosmo are all going to start curating more content inside Snapchat.
Snapchat will let these publishers create Our Stories, which are curated collections of user posts around a particular event. The Stories are then viewable in Snapchat’s Discover section.
Snap has been curating Our Stories for years for major events like NFL games, concerts and awards shows, and sells ads alongside them. But those Our Stories have always been compiled by Snapchat employees. Now Snap is asking media companies to curate these montages for them.
The move does two things.
- It creates a new revenue stream for Snap and should lead to more ad inventory. (The company will split revenue from ads sold to run with these Our Stories with the publishers who compile them.) Snap said Thursday that over the past month over 75 million people watched Our Stories inside the app. That number should go up with more than 20 new media partners creating Our Stories in addition to Snap.
- It could provide Snapchat with some extra publicity. Media partners will be able to share these Our Stories on their websites, and it’s possible they’ll promote them or solicit posts from users in order to create them. In either instance, it gives media organizations another reason to talk about Snapchat, which could be helpful for Snap.
Of course, Snapchat’s issue has never been a lack of ad inventory; it’s actually been the opposite. The company is still trying to drum up interest from advertisers to create competition for its ad auctions, which would lead to higher prices.
But getting more content from media companies isn’t a bad thing, especially if Snap can make money from that content in the process.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
