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CNN launched a daily news show called The Update on Snapchat, furthering its effort to appeal to younger viewers on digital platforms.
Each show will air at 6 p.m. Eastern Time and can be found in the Shows section of the app. They will feature breaking news segments, with five or more stories per day with reporting from CNN’s own anchors and reporters.
The new show strengthens Snapchat as a news platform. NBC launched a daily news show called Stay Tuned in July, airing on weekdays at 7 a.m. and 4 p.m., focused on four to five major headlines of the day. The show has done particularly well since its launch, already amassing over 29 million unique viewers. The Update may not necessarily cause a decline in viewership for Stay Tuned, as the show times do not overlap.
Launching a daily news show on Snapchat positions CNN to appeal to a younger audience. It also builds out Snap's video content offerings, which could help it monetize current users:
- CNN can reach millennial audiences it's missing on traditional TV. CNN’s average viewer age in Q2 2017 for was 60. On the other hand, millennials between the ages of 18 and 34 accounted for 63% of Snapchat’s user base in Q4 2016. Additionally, 50% of respondents between 18 and 29 in a 2016 Pew Research Center survey said that they often got their news online, which was higher than all older age groups.
- This isn’t the cable network’s first push into digital online video. Earlier in June, CNN announced it would invest $40 million in its in-house online video startup Great Big Story in a bid to capture millennial viewers.
- It builds out Snapchat’s TV-like content offering. The Update joins Snaps original programs and TV shows specifically repurposed for Snap’s vertical format. Snap’s first original program, Good Luck America, has grown its total viewership of 29 million globally, while E!’s The Rundown averages almost 8 million viewers per episode.
- Securing shows like The Update can help Snapchat monetize amid slowing user growth. Snapchat added just 7 million daily users in Q2 2017 — a 4% increase from the previous quarter — which is lower than the 5% sequential increase it posted in Q1. Despite adding users at a slower rate, new high-quality shows help Snapchat engage audiences that it can pitch to TV brand advertisers, potentially boosting ad spend.
Kevin Gallagher, research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has put together a report on social media demographics that highlights the key audience demographics for six major social platforms: Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. It also:
- Breaks down the reach of social platform audiences in terms of age, income, education, and gender.
- Examines how time spent and monthly users across major age brackets have changed in the past three years.
- Explores the preferences of US teens and young millennials, and how they're changing.
- Identifies the most important demographic changes that advertisers should monitor as social platforms continue to grow.
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