Snapchat targets college newspapers (SNAP)

Snapchat Dau by region BI Intelligence

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Snapchat is partnering with colleges across the US to include their school newspapers in the Discover section of the app, as a part of the company’s bid to become a stronger news platform.

Snapchat is first partnering with UC Berkeley, Texas A&M, Syracuse University, and the University of Wisconsin, though it plans on adding over 24 new partners in the next three months.

Called Campus Publisher Stories, the newspapers will be released weekly, containing 10 to 12 slides each. Ads will be run on the weekly Stories, and Snap will split the ad revenue with each university.

Campus Publisher Stories aren’t limited to college students. Though the Stories will be visible only to users physically near each university, each student publication will have a QR code that users elsewhere can scan with Snap’s camera to view.

The partnerships can help Snapchat become a bigger player in news and give a boost to its advertisers' campaigns success on the platform for the following reasons:

Partnering with campus papers can help Snapchat become more of a go-to news platform for college students. Forty-seven percent of college students indicated their campus newspaper is their primary source of news for on-campus events, according to a 2017 Snap-commissioned ORC International study.
And news consumption is already increasing on Snapchat. Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed by Pew Research Center indicated they read news on Snap, which is up from 17% a year prior. The increase is partly attributable to the amount of news content Snap has pushed out, and to the caliber of news partners — such as releasing daily news shows CNN’s The Update and NBC’s Stay Tuned.
Campus Publisher Stories can help Snapchat onboard local small and mid-size advertisers. Ads running next to Campus Publisher Stories can help local college businesses drive foot traffic. Users under 25 years old spend 40 minutes per day in-app, on average, providing a relatively big window of opportunity for ads to be seen by users, which can further entice SMBs to advertise on the platform.

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