As Snapchat continues to grow, and solidify its business offerings, the company has today announced a new partnership with media giant Gannett which will see Gannett promote Snap ads to local businesses across the US and Canada, via its network of more than 100,000 small business clients.
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Under the new deal, Gannett’s sales force will be trained and enabled to sell Snapchat advertising, which will help connect a wide range of new businesses with Snap ads. The key draw here will be Snap's young audience, with the video above essentially a pitch for these newcomer brands as to why they should consider Snap ads within their campaigns.
Snapchat's looking to broaden its reach among smaller businesses in order to build on its ad momentum, and maximize its opportunities. The company posted a 62% year-over-year increase in revenue in Q4, while the number of active advertisers on the platform doubled in the period, and it's been working to add more tools to help promote SMBs - like improved business listings on the Snap Map to help connect users with relevant business information.
According to Snap, there are now more than 35 million businesses listed on its map tool, helping to boost discovery and connection with its user base.
Through this new partnership with Gannett, Snap will now be looking to underline the benefit of that connection to these potential business partners.
After a few years of uncertainty, particularly in the wake of Instagram copying its Stories function, Snapchat is now moving into a new phase of expansion, with CEO Even Spiegel recently predicting "multiple years of at least 50% revenue growth at the company". In fact, Spiegel has said that this estimate is conservative - and when you also factor in the company's efforts on AR glasses, which could (eventually) further help to promote local business offerings via in-view prompts and alerts, it could well be worth SMBs getting involved, and maintaining connection with the app.
They'll now have more ways to do so, with easier connection into the Snap network - which could open up a range of new opportunities.
