SnapChat announced this week that users of their service will begin to see paid advertisements when using the service. Some brands have already been experimenting with the platform, reaching customers through direct messages. However, the announcement made clear that there will be new opportunities available to marketers via the service that will also serve to generate revenue for SnapChat.
This development adds one more platform to the already long list of platforms that digital marketers must be capable of using. This proliferation of marketing channels strikes me as having had a transformational impact on the role and demands of a marketing executive. In the past, marketers were primarily focused on three formats, print (including both traditional print as well as outdoor), television, and radio. The formats often had significant overlap, and messages/format merely had to be tweaked and modified in order to fit the proper medium. However, in today's world, that is no longer the case. Marketers have to craft campaigns that are uniquely tailored to a variety of platforms, whether that's Twitter, Facebook, TV, YouTube or now SnapChat. Customers expect to see different messages and formats on the different platforms that effectively utilize the chosen medium and create the proper interactive experience. This means that challenge of the job for marketers is significantly increased as compared to the people who did the job in prior years. The inclusion of SnapChat shows that this expansion is likely to continue with technological innovation, and as discussed last week, with Virtual Reality on the horizon, the marketer's challenges of learning, adapting and innovating will become ever more challenging.
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