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Mobile Messaging Snap Domino's Pizza

Snapchat snares Millward Brown and Centro execs to help prove its value to brands

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By Seb Joseph, News editor

March 23, 2016 | 3 min read

Snapchat has poached analytics executives from Millward Brown and Centro as part of wider efforts to demonstrate its value to marketers.

Snapchat revenue to hit $300m

The messaging app has named Ali Rana its head of audience and brand solutions and Gunnard Johnson its head of quantitative ads research. Rana joins from Millward Brown where she was chief digital strategist and Johnson was senior vice president of data and analytics at Centro.

Their experience working with companies such as Facbeook and Google, gives clout to a measurement offering that Snapchat is rapidly expanding as it scales its advertising business. The app's marketers can already view post-campaign metrics like views and brand lift but the likes of Adidas and Domino’s have expressed a desire to commit more funds to the app should it give them similar data to what they are used to trading on.

The success of that shift is predicated on Snapchat’s ability to bring its media in line with how other online platforms package their insights. One way of doing this is a tie-up with Nielsen, effectively allowing advertisers to measure its video ads similarly to how they do so for TV.

However, the app does offer more measurement insights than perhaps some observers would think, thanks in part to under-the-radar deals with Millward Brown and Nielsen that have been giving advertisers post-campaign brand lift studies since early 2015. Snapchat also reportedly works with Moat to check how many people are actually viewing ad, and it’s also rumoured that marketers will eventually be able to track users beyond the platform as part of beefed up targeting options.

Snapchat’s move to firm up its credentials in the eyes of advertisers comes as it reportedly shapes up for a public offering and looks to broaden its revenue streams.

The social network’s meteoric rise is happening inside the rapidly growing instant messaging sector and faces stiff competition for usage from WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Kik and, in China, from WeChat. Some 70 per cent of Snapchat users are also using Facebook Messenger, according to Global Web Index, so Snapchat is in a commercial race for eyeball time and attention.

Mobile Messaging Snap Domino's Pizza

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