Snapchat Plans On Spending $1 Million Per Day For The New Spotlight Videos Feature

Snapchat has rolled out a new feature, “Spotlight“, for user-created videos within the Snapchat app, in nearly a dozen countries. Based on Snapchat user’s preferences and favorite videos, the new tool will curate the “most entertaining” Snaps from Snapchat creators and broadcast them to viewers. Along with the new rollout, Snap Inc. also announced that to encourage the use of its new video feature, the company is planning to pay $1 million every day to creators of the top-performing posts.

Spotlight – Snapchat’s New Video Feature

Spotlight, Snapchat’s new video-sharing feature is designed to help its Snapchat app better compete with ByteDance-owned TikTok and Instagram Reels, as it highlights entertaining videos from all users, regardless of the number of followers they have.

This feature allows users to create short videos up to 60 seconds in length and edit them with creative tools such as:

1. Captions

2. Original sound recordings

3. Licensed music

4. Augmented Reality filters 

5. Hashtags

6. GIFs

Spotlight is an entertainment platform that delivers fun, positive, and safe experiences for every user. Rather than being a space for news or overtly political content, it is a fair and fun place for Snapchatters to share their best Snaps and see perspectives from across the Snapchat community. This feature will also highlight content from users whether or not they have a public profile.

Submitting Content to Spotlight

In order to submit content to Spotlight, the first thing you have to do is to

1. Create a Snap

2. Select ‘Spotlight’ displayed at the top of the ‘Send To’ screen

3. Then hit the ‘Send’ button in the bottom right-hand corner and your content will be submitted.

Snap creators can also add topics to their Snaps before submitting them to Spotlight, which is recommended so it can be surfaced to people interested in that topic.

How does Snapchat Curate Content?

Snapchat will surface submitted content in a new dedicated section to Spotlight videos, on the basis of users’ personal preferences. To surface the most engaging Snaps that a user may be interested in, Snapchat’s algorithm also considers a few factors such as:

1. Watch time

2. Likes

3. Shares

4. Bounce rate

However, before the content is surfaced in Spotlight, the content will get reviewed by moderators to ensure that it is appropriate and entertaining.

Snap to Pay $1,000,000 USD Every Day For The Best Snap

With the new feature, Snapchat allows the creation of content that could go viral which is a noticeable difference from its long-time focus on communication between friends and curated posts. However, to encourage the use of Spotlight, Snapchat is paying a share of $1 million every day for its users who post the best content and highlight top snaps to its 249+ million daily users in a feed they can swipe or tap.

In order to earn a share of more than $1 million, your Snaps must comply with Snap Inc’s community guidelines, terms of service, Spotlight terms, and the Spotlight-specific guidelines. In addition to that, not everyone who is eligible for a Snapchat account (age 13+) can submit to Spotlight.

In some niche markets such as France, Germany, and Ireland creators must be 18 years of age or be at least 16 years of age to submit a Snap to Spotlight. Also, note that Snapchatters who have a Public Profile can have their display name linked with their Spotlight Snap.

The company said that it will pay out $1 million per day until the end of 2020 and maybe even longer.  Currently, this feature is available to selected countries like Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

How You Can Earn Money From Spotlight Submissions?

Snap creators have the opportunity to earn money if they submit top-performing Snaps. Payment is determined by Snapchat’s proprietary formula, which takes into account various engagement metrics and other factors – such as how many unique views it receives compared to other content submitted that day – during each day. 

NOTE: Snapchat actively monitors for fraud to ensure that the view counts are not artificially inflated.

However, if you delete any Snap from Spotlight, then it won’t be eligible for payment. Similarly, brands and advertisements are also not eligible for payment.

Earnings will be paid out to Snapchatters every day. Snapchat will send a chat message to users directly via Team Snapchat to inform them that they have awarded a share of the Snap prize money.

The company also notes that they will never ask users to provide payment information directly to Team Snapchat; instead, they will link users to their third party payments provider, Hyperwallet.

So far, there is no restriction to how often a similar individual can earn money from Spotlight entries and therefore users who win can continue submitting content to potentially earn more money.

As more young people turn to Snapchat to message friends through videos during the coronavirus, Snapchat witnessed a great hike in its shares. That is the Snap shares have almost tripled this year to a record $45.38 earlier this month.

With Spotlight, the company hopes customers increase the time they spend on the Snapchat app, as it also opens the door to advertising.

If you’re not sure where to begin, it’s nothing to be worried about. There’s plenty of reputable social media agencies you can get assistance from.