Snap CEO Evan Spiegel
As Hollywood scrambles to catch up to the streaming media revolution Netflix ignited, Snap is deepening its investment in entertainment of a different sort — “vertical video.”
Executives for the photo-centric messaging app on Thursday used the historic Southern California movie lot where silent pictures star Mary Pickford filmed in the 1920s to announce 10 new Snapchat original series this year.
The varied programming slate includes a daily show about celebrity and internet culture from BuzzFeed, a docuseries, While Black, that explores race from best-selling author and filmmaker MK Asante, and Stranded with Sam and Colby, a series about two paranormal investigators, from Bunim/Murray Productions, creators of MTV’s groundbreaking reality show The Real World.
“We’re working closely with a new generation of creators and we’re listening closely to our audience to develop new kinds of shows from the ground up,” says Sean Mills, Snapchat’s head of original content. “With Snap Originals, we’re playing a different game. And doing it in a way that makes the small screen feel large.”
Snap is looking to create new, upbeat narrative after a difficult year in which an unpopular redesign frustrated users, and competition intensified from Facebook’s Instagram app. It also saw a wave of high-level executive departures. Shares have doubled in price this year but are still off 33% from its IPO debut as it’s struggled to increase users.
Much as Netflix mines its deep trove of user data to inform programming decisions, Snap executives say they take the pulse of its community of 186 million daily active users before they greenlight shows. The comedy Sneakerheads, about three college freshmen navigating Los Angeles sneaker culture, reflects Snapchatters’ obsession with footwear.
These sorts of user insights may well give Snap a competitive edge over newcomers like Quibi, which has raised $1 billion to launch a subscription service for the small screen. The startup’s founders, movie mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg and former Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman, have signed some notable talent, including Guillermo del Toro, the Academy Award-winning director of The Shape of Water and Pan’s Labyrinth, and Sam Raimi, the director of the original Spider-Man trilogy.
It’s no surprise that mobile video is attracting this kind of attention. Researcher eMarketer predicts that adults in the U.S. will spend more time on their mobile devices than in front of the TV this year. Millennials, ages 18 to 34, are absorbed with their smartphones than any other demographic group, according to Nielsen.
But unlike Netflix, Amazon and Hulu, which rely on high-profile original content to attract paid monthly subscribers, Snap executives think of original programs as a way to deepen engagement with an audience who comes for free—as frequently as 20 times a day. Much like a broadcast network, Snap aims to convert those views to revenue using its six-second unskippable commercials.
Mills says Snap’s original shows are 3-5 minute episodes of fast-paced storytelling, with an actual beginning, middle and end. Over the last year, he said, the amount of time Shapchatters spent watching shows has tripled.
NBC’s made-for-Snapchat daily news show Stay Tuned reached 30 million monthly viewers, two-thirds of whom represent a new audience for NBC news. The Snapchat reality series, Endless Summer, reached over 28 million viewers. And more than 40% of those who completed the first episode of the mystery series Dead Girls Detective Agency watched all the way through.
Snap renewed Endless Summer, Dead Girls Detective Agency and the docuseries Deep Creek for another season. Not all made-for-Snapchat content has worked. CNN stopped producing its daily show, The Update, in 2017 amid mixed results, though it joined 20 news partners last year in creating curated stories with user generated content.
