Anybody who’s anybody has been in France this week at the annual mega Cannes Lion convention.
That includes Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel, who came to France to talk about his belief in his platform and the ways it does business — and the fact that it wants to offer “non-creepy” digital advertising.
“Spiegel, the 25-year-old founder of the social messaging network, speaking during a keynote interview at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, argued that digital advertising is all too often ineffective and intrusive,” reports MarketingLand. “He criticized re-targeting ads that follow people around the web, horizontal video ads that force people to rotate their phones, and desktop ads clumsily repurposed for mobile devices.”
The timing of the conference was perfect. Snapchat has embarked on a marketing campaign for its new advertising effort. Called “3V” — which stands for vertical, video, views –it’s Snapchat’s latest gambit in the quest to appeal to the nearly 100 million daily active users on the platform.
“Snapchat video, the argument goes, is designed to be viewed on mobile phones; Snapchat says vertical video has up to nine times the completion rate of horizontal video,” explains Marketing Land. “The video always plays full screen with audio (when device audio is turned on), meaning viewers are more likely to be give their full attention to the message.”
Snapchat counts 60 percent of U.S. smart phone users 13 to 34 as users and boasts 2 billion video viewings daily.
“Our community watches more video on Snapchat than any other platform,” Spiegel insists.
Spiegel’s main pitch?
Snapchat ads, he insists, are effective without gathering personal data, since his company offers targeting by location and gender, but not by interest topics like other platforms.
“We really care about not being creepy,” Spiegel said. “That’s really important to us.”