Snapchat Gains Marketing Measurement Power From New Hires

Despite the onslaught of new options like Peach, Waffle, and Wanelo, the hottest social property remains on Snapchat. Brand interest in connecting with its Gen Z and Millennial users certainly isn’t disappearing like the content posted on the app, especially now that the platform is taking action to help marketers track what happens in its FOMO-driven world. With recent hires and partnership announcements, Snapchat is signaling to brands that it’s ready to help them harness the power of their nimble platform.

Snapchat’s numbers continue to soar with their daily video views jumping from 2 billion to a jaw-dropping 8 billion in just a single year. Regular engagement is also huge with 54 percent of Snapchat users accessing it for an average of 30 minutes a day. The platform has created many new concepts and even recently brought one of them into the real world with a series of billboards that are a subtle wink to their geofilter feature. While Snapchat has offered brands innovative options from the beginning, including time-sensitive filters and branded lenses, they have struggled to help marketers track the performance of content on the platform.

That is starting to change. Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel has heard the concerns and the company has just announced the hiring of two people who will help, Gunnard Johnson and Ali Rana. Johnson comes to the company from Google, where he served as director of advertising research and he’ll occupy a similar role at Snapchat. Rana comes from the agency world, after 17 years with Millward Brown. As head of audience and brand solutions, she’ll fill in the marketing side of the company’s focus on advertising measurement and analytics that brands are seeking.

Coupling these high-profile hires with Snapchat’s plans for audience-based ad strategies on their Discover portal and the recently announced partnership with Nielsen Digital Ad Ratings that will allow for comparison to TV ads shows that the platform is serious about supporting marketers that want to track more than just impressions.