Snapchat rolls out Nielsen ratings for UK marketers as it continues to scale up its ad offering
Snapchat has now rolled out Nielsen mobile Digital Ad Ratings (mDAR) in the UK, marking its first international measurement offering.
As the messaging service continues to scale up its ad offering, the move is a sure sign that it wants to open the door for brands to better measure how their content is consumed on the platform.
The partnership with Nielsen, will effectively allow advertisers to measure their video ads in a similar manner to how they do so for TV.
Snapchat announced that its US campaigns would get the Nielsen treatment back in February to measure the audiences of its 3V advertising metrics (video, vertical, and views) on mobile devices, and now UK advertisers will have access to the same data.
The likes of Burberry, the BBC and Cadbury have made use of Snapchat for their campaigns over the past 12 months. Partnering with Nielsen for further British initiatives and moving towards a more robust system of post-campaign measurement could help the app clear up misconceptions around its measurement tools and help it court greater interest from brands.
In March this year, Snapchat poached analytics executives from Millward Brown and Centro to demonstrate its value to advertisers, naming Ali Rana as its head of audience solutions and Gunnard Johnson as head of quantitive ads research.
While Snapchat has overtaken Facebook in the video stakes, clocking up 10bn views a day, there aren't many chances from brands to see the type of return they are on more established platforms. So in offering more measurement and targeting options Snapchat could not only bring advertising costs down, but also help brands see the appeal of investing in the app.
A report from Digiday published last month suggested that publishers using Snapchat's Discover platform would soon be granted access to numbers from ComScore; something that would let media owners include Snapchat numbers in their overall pitch to advertisers.