As reported by Adweek, movie studios – specifically Universal and Paramount – are among the first advertisers to get access to a new long-form ad unit on Snapchat. The two have used these ads to promote Neighbors 2 and 10 Cloverfield Lane, respectively. The full-length trailers that have run as ads are a big departure from the short-form video ads previously allowed by Snapchat. As the story points out, though, letting studios (and others) run longer video ads means access by Snapchat to more advertising revenue. The ads appeared within the Snapchat Discover section in various publications.

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Hollywood studios have been right there on the forefront of not just Snapchat advertising but new ad formats from many social networks and other apps. Creed was the premiere advertiser on Twitter Moments, The Peanuts Movie and others bought Snapchat’s now-defunct Sponsored Lenses and more.

Neighbors-2-Banner

While this is an easy decision for two of the parties involved – Snapchat is happy to take Hollywood’s money and Hollywood is happy to repurpose existing material – it remains to be seen how the third party (the audience) reacts to these. Snapchat is all about that immediate moment and a 2:30 trailer is a big time investment and creates a big delta from the previous 10-second time limit. I have to believe that while everyone involved is saying this is still in testing phase, the company will soon find that no one is sticking around much past that 10 or 15 second mark. We’ll have to see if anyone actually reports on the effectiveness of this new expanded format.

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