Snapchat Launches Promoted Snaps: New Social Media Advertising

What’s Up Snapchat?

Social media is an advertiser’s dream: a huge, actively engaged audience that’s sorted by demographic and lifestyle choices. This weekend another platform called Snapchat will take the plunge into social media advertising, permitting paid advertisements to users.

Snapchat works by allowing users to take and send pictures to each other that will appear for up to 10 seconds. Then, theoretically, the picture disappears forever. These “view-once” pictures are not necessarily deleted off the phone, however, a revelation that caused controversy when recently discovered. They’ve also come under fire for facilitating sexting by creating the illusion of temporary photos.

Up until now, Snapchat has only used social media advertising to promote itself, sending out periodic updates to users that highlight new features and perks. But they’re now launching ads to users that will appear in the “recent updates” section.

What sets this social media advertising campaign apart from others is that users have the option to choose to view the ads or not, and the ads will disappear after they’ve been viewed. It’s a sort of subtle indictment of the advertising campaigns of neighboring Facebook and Twitter, which forces users to see ads in their newsfeed. Snapchat even added in a company blog post that forcing users to see ads would be “totally rude.”

They also won’t be using members’ data to find the best target audience for ads, saying instead they hope to create a fun throwback to an era before “creepy and targeted” ads.

This new advertising platform has the potential to revolutionize Los Angeles digital marketing. As Snapchat pointed out, creating ads that are less targeted and more generalized requires greater creativity and innovation. Los Angeles social media users will also have the ultimate power to view or ignore ads, which will swing the pendulum away from the advertisers and back towards the users.

According to Tech Times, about 50 percent of Snapchat users are under the age of 17. Los Angeles digital marketing firms will now be tasked with creating content that appeals to younger users without alienating the other, older half of the audience. With over 700 million stories sent daily, there’s certainly plenty of audience to go around.

The rise of Snapchat from a 2011 startup to one of the most popular social media platforms today is evidence of a revolution that will dramatically affect Los Angeles digital marketing. Day by day, Los Angeles social media marketing is rising to the forefront of the most effective ways for advertisers to reach their audiences. Instead of relying on traditional print media, social media platforms will be the advertising medium of the future.

Companies like Bright Age will be the go-to places for advertisers looking to access the Los Angeles social media advertising market. As a digital creative agency passionate about social media, search engine optimization and digital marketing, Bright Age has the social media experience to build online brand awareness and engagement.