Snapchat's publisher portal, Discover, is getting its own home for holiday content.
On Friday the mobile messaging app plans to add a holiday-themed Discover channel from DIY publisher Brit & Co. that is being sponsored by Google. However, having a specific theme isn't the only thing that sets Brit & Co.'s channel apart from the ones already run by other publishers like BuzzFeed, Vice, ESPN and CNN.
Unlike those other Discover channels, Brit & Co.'s Discover channel won't be evergreen. Instead it will appear for two separate weeklong periods: from November 27 through December 3 and from December 18 through December 24. There are reasons for that scheduling.
"Both us and Snapchat are looking at it as a test for each other and trying to understand if this type of content is really valuable around the different seasons of the year, or if it makes sense for Brit & Co. to have a broader set of content later down the road," said Brit & Co. CEO Brit Morin, who added that her company's content reaches 78 million unique people each month across its own site as well as Pinterest and Facebook. The companies opted for the two separate weeklong periods instead a single, longer period because "we didn't want user fatigue around too much holiday content," she said.
A longer period could also wear out Brit &Co.'s employees, who will be creating exclusive content for the Discover channel in addition to their regular jobs producing content for the company's other properties. While some other Discover publishers like Mashable have formed specific teams dedicated to their Snapchat channels, Brit & Co. is pulling in employees from its editorial, design, photo and video teams as well as a couple project managers to contribute to the channel. "We sort of created a 20% project, to use a Google term, and pulled people off other teams," Ms. Morin said, referencing the search giant's policy of letting employees spend one-fifth of their time working on passion projects.
Brit & Co.'s holiday-themed Discover channel will feature 14 new pieces of content each day, and each day will have its own theme like gifting or food and beverage, which will be reflected in the channel's icon that will change daily. That content will span videos, text-and-photo stories, animated GIFs and trivia questions, and topics will include gift ideas, DIY projects, decorating ideas and recipes. "We've created close to 300 pieces of custom content," including a hand-designed font for the channel, Ms. Morin said.
Brit & Co. has also created custom ads alongside the channel's sponsor, Google. Each day the channel will feature two or three vertical video ads promoting Google's mobile search app. Ms. Morin said the ads will "focus on the most common searches during the holiday season, like how many tablespoons are in a cup and what is a persimmon."
