Daniel Holloway, writing for Broadcasting & Cable, attempted to unravel Snapchat’s new Discover media platform. The company described it as “not social media.” As Holloway assessed, the partnership between old media and not-social-media unlocks new revenue streams and new growth potential for both, and does so with relatively little investment. Additionally, Holloway sought comments from outside experts including Brian Solis.

Excerpt:

“The incentive for Snapchat to do this is it monetizes,” said Brian Solis, principal analyst for Altimeter Group. In 2013, Snapchat rebuffed a $3 billion acquisition offer from Facebook. “Now there’s tremendous pressure for the company to generate revenue, substantial revenue.”

Discover allows Snapchat, through ad sales, to monetize content that it is essentially aggregating. In exchange for uploading a handful of videos to Discover—videos that will only be available to view for 24 hours before being replaced by new ones—brand partners get a cut of the ad money. They also get access to Snapchat’s base of young, mobile-friendly, appointment-viewing-averse audience members. (A Snapchat representative declined to comment on how many users the app has or its demographic information, but Comscore in November measured its penetration among smartphone-using adults 18- 34 at 32.9%—behind only Facebook and Instagram.)

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