The Newsstand - April 2018

Snapchat Rolls Out Analytics Tool for Influencers

Snapchat has finally decided to provide certain influencers access to useful analytics and statistics about their audiences and how well their stories are performing.

This move will help influencers sell brands on sponsoring their stories, and help Snapchat convince influencers to keep on using their platform.

Snapchat’s parent company Snap announced that, for now, only influencers who are part of the Snapchat Official Stories program, or those with large audiences, can use the in-app analytics tool. As for the rest, Snap’s spokesperson declined to disclose any specific details.

Here are two key groups of statistics influencers will be able to see:

1. Viewership details: Influencers will be able to see the number of views their Stories received over the past week, month, and year, as well as the number of viewers. Snapchat will also show them the total and average number of minutes that viewers spent watching their Stories, along with the percentage of viewers who watched a Story till completion.

2. Audience insights: The second group of insights includes details about the influencers’ audience. Snapchat will offer them a detailed breakdown of their followers, including their age, gender, location, and interests.

Why Did Snapchat Need Analytics?

For Snapchat, introducing analytics couldn’t have been more important.

That’s because it was losing influencers to Instagram, which recently copied Snapchat’s most famous feature ‘Stories’. Influencers found Instagram Stories to be a much better option since the Facebook-owned app also offered a lot of analytical tools and influencer-friendly features.

Google Enables Ad Blocker for Chrome

The much-awaited, in-built ad blocker for Chrome is finally here.

Google enabled the ad blocker on February 15^th, announcing that instead of banning all ads from showing up in the browser, it will only target the most annoying and intrusive ones. More specifically, the ad blocker aims to block out flashy ads and those which violate the standards set by the Coalition for Better Ads.

The main reason behind this move is Google wants to discourage websites from creating bad user experiences. The websites will be evaluated based on sample pages, and the site owners of failed websites will receive a message informing them that their ad has been blocked.

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