Snapchat’s ad business is only 16 months old, but it’s maturing quickly in 2016. At the same time as the mobile app is beginning to address advertisers’ concerns over whether people are actually viewing at their ads, it’s also adding independent verification of how many people were shown those ads, putting it on par with traditional media companies like TV networks, as well as digital ones like Google and Facebook.
On Thursday, Nielsen announced that it would start measuring brands’ video ads that run on Snapchat in the US as part of the measurement company’s mobile Digital Ad Ratings program. For now, the measurement will only apply to ads that appear within Snapchat’s Live Stories feeds and publishers’ Discover channels, but eventually, it will also include its Sponsored Geofilter and Sponsored Lens ads that people can append to their own posts, or “snaps.”
Nielsen will report the number of people who saw an ad, how many times they saw it, the demographic breakdown of that audience and gross ratings points, which brands can use to compare their Snapchat campaigns on a more like-to-like basis with their TV ads.
Snapchat already gives advertisers some information about how their campaigns perform, such as number of views, completions and reach. But advertisers are typically more trusting of measurements that come from an objective party, which is why the Nielsen deal could make brands more comfortable spending their money on Snapchat.
Snapchat had briefed agency execs during CES in January that it planned to let Nielsen measure its ads, as Digiday had previously reported.
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