Media brands, including many Snapchat Discover partners, are testing Instagram Stories and report solid early traffic
Mike Shields / Wall Street Journal :
Context & Ripple Effects
Snapchat built Discover into a premium walled garden for media brands — at its peak the section sent some publishers millions of views per day — and doubled down on legitimacy in early 2016 by partnering with Nielsen and ad tech firms Innovid and Sizmek to make Discover video measurable for advertisers.
Instagram Stories' arrival gives those same Discover partners a second vertical-video home overnight, and per Mike Shields' reporting they are already testing it and seeing solid early traffic — the first real test of whether publisher loyalty to Snapchat survives a credible copycat.
First-order effects
- Media brands that are Snapchat Discover partners now run the same Story format on two platforms simultaneously, splitting their editorial and production effort between them while comparing traffic directly.
Second-order effects
- Advertisers gain a bidding dynamic: if Instagram Stories delivers comparable reach to Discover, brands can pressure Snapchat on pricing using Instagram as leverage, eroding the scarcity premium Discover commanded.
Third-order effects
- Publishers learn to multi-home their vertical video rather than anchor to one platform — a pattern that culminates when outlets like Hearst, Bustle, TechCrunch, BBC News, and Mic shift their enthusiasm from Snapchat to Instagram outright, pushing Snap toward structural fixes like the redesign that puts user-generated Stories back alongside Discover content.
The trend: Vertical video is commoditizing across platforms, turning exclusive publisher distribution deals into table stakes and forcing Snapchat to compete on product rather than format ownership.