The popular video messaging application Snapchat has been rather serious about diversifying its services for a while now, most notably in terms of hiring journalists and serving news, but also by allowing pretty much any brand to reach out to more people in an organic manner via Snapchat Discover. The latest move made to further that diversification agenda was just announced earlier today. Namely, the American company revealed that it has sealed a deal with Turner Sports, a division of the media conglomerate Turner Broadcasting System owned by Time Warner. The deal spanning multiple years will bring the biggest sports events from National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, professional golf and boxing to Snapchat, or more specifically – its Live Stories which are basically a bunch of photos and videos submitted by users from various events filtered by location and curated by Snapchat. As the company reveals, it’s planning to use this opportunity to show the most interesting behind-the-scenes shots of the biggest sports events throughout the year. Apart from the content submitted by users, Turner Sports’ social media team will also contribute to these Live Stories.
The first results, or better said the first Live Story that will come out of the said cooperation will already be visible this month during the NCAA college basketball tournament March Madness which is scheduled to start next Tuesday, March 15th. Naturally, nothing in life is free, and Turner Sports’ stake in this entire venture comes in the form of video ads which the company will display between user-submitted photos and videos. However, the ads won’t be displayed on the stream but will instead play in full-screen vertical mode at specific intervals. No further details were given so we still don’t know how often will the ads be displayed, but hopefully Snapchat and Turner Sports will find a nice balance between user-submitted and promotional content, especially considering the aforementioned fact that Turner Sports’ social media team will already be contributing to all of the related Live Stories. In other words, some product placement can realistically be expected.
This is yet another Snapchat’s attempt to not only ennoble its platform in terms of features and content but also to monetize it, which is something free-to-use services like this one are always having trouble with. Just last month, the company announced another, not any less creative way to make some money off of its popularity – on-demand geofilters which any user can create for a small fee in order to profile his, her, or its audience by location.