Snapchat courts influencers with analytics tool (SNAP)

Snapchat released an in-app tool that provides popular creators with detailed viewership analytics on their Stories,Marketing Landreports.

The tool enables influencers to access their Stories' audience demographics and interests, average time spent, and completion rates, among other metrics. The tool is available to influencers with large Snapchat followings, or those who are part of Snapchat’sOfficial Stories program. Previously, influencers could see only daily Story view counts, which disappeared after 24 hours.

The tool highlights Snapchat’s broader effort to lure in influencers, a group the company hasn’t historically catered to. During its Q3 2017 earnings call, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel admitted the company has largely “neglected the creator community,” but plans to roll out tools in 2018 that help influencers monetize. The analytics tool is one of Snapchat’s first steps toward cultivating more influencers, who are valuable to the company because they can ultimately bring their loyal follower bases to the platform with them.

The move by Snapchat could spur influencer marketing activity on the platform:

The analytics tool can help guide influencers' content strategies.
And it will help influencers convince brands to sponsor their Stories.

Snapchat is looking to better compete with Instagram as a marketing platform.Instagram already offers Stories analytics, including impressions, reach, replies, and exits, to users with business accounts. And over 28% of influencers cited the Facebook-owned app as the most important platform to their personal brand — 0% cited Snapchat, according to an August 2017 survey by Adweek. The new analytics tool could help Snapchat make its platform more attractive to influencers, but it's likely these creators will continue to prioritize Instagram in the near term thanks to its bigger Stories reach.

The concept of a brand hiring a popular personality to promote a product or service isn't new, and brands know that celebrity endorsements can sell products. In the age of social media, however, brands are finding new ways to leverage popular figures as brand ambassadors, and these people aren't necessarily famous actors, singers, or athletes.

While brands certainly continue to tap celebrities for endorsement deals, they’re also starting to enlist social media personalities, broadly known as “influencers,” for advertising campaigns. Social influencers generally focus on specific content areas — like fashion, beauty, parenting, or gaming — and cater their content to a specific vertical.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

Influencer marketing ad spend is poised to reach between $5 billion and $10 billion in 2022. Taking the midpoint of $7.5 billion as a base case, this represents a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 38%.
Brands need to fine-balance providing influencers with enough creative freedom, while also ensuring the messaging positively reflects the brand. Nearly 40% of influencers believe that overly restrictive content guidelines are one of the biggest mistakes brands and agencies make when working with them.
Authenticity is key for influencer marketing messaging. Brands should give influencers sufficient creative freedom to keep posts authentic, as it makes posts less likely to be dismissed by users. Other best practices include repurposing influencer content for multiple platforms, evaluating the audience and following of an influencer, and leveraging data to optimize future campaigns.

Discusses the top verticals that are poised to benefit the most from influencer marketing, and which ones are growing.
Highlights the factors that will be critical for compliance with social platforms and the FTC.