Snapchat is Trying to Lure Political Ads

The messaging and social media app Snapchat is making a play for the heap of political ad money that’s going to be spent on the 2016 election. The company is touting its appeal to millennial voters as a big selling point to presidential candidates, many of whom already have Snapchat accounts. According to a survey commissioned by the company, two-thirds of its millennial users are likely to vote, reports Politico.

Snapchat has been investing heavily in Live Stories, a kind of crowdsourced broadcast in which user-submitted snaps are stitched together to show many different perspectives of an event. The company now has continuous Live Stories in New Hampshire and Iowa, two early election battlegrounds, and is trying to get candidates to buy ads that would be inserted between the user videos. So far only John Kasich, Rand Paul and Scott Walker have bought ads on the platform.

Snapchat now has 100 million daily active users who watch 6 billion videos per day. About one-third of millennials who are likely to vote are already using the app, according to the survey.