Online reading platform Wattpad is adding a new chapter to its developing advertising story.
The company this week unveiled its newest ad product, Wattpad Futures, an opt-in program giving the most popular of its approximately 2.3 million active writers a chance to profit from their work by allowing ads to be displayed during chapter breaks.
Wattpad users will see one ad – primarily video, but some static – for every 30 minutes they spend on the platform. The average Wattpad user spends 30 minutes per day on the platform.
“It’s something that we expect to be very popular with our [writer] community,” said Ashleigh Gardner, head of partnerships for Wattpad in Toronto. “Writers are eager to make money and be rewarded for their work, and this is giving them a new way to do that without having to charge their readers.
“They’ll continue their relationship with readers and have it funded by brands looking to advertise on the platform.”
Not all of the approximately 250 million stories uploaded to Wattpad will feature advertising. Instead, the company will limit participation to writers whose stories generate the greatest amount of reading time.
Gardner said Wattpad writers retained the “majority” of revenues collected by the company. While writers who participated in a recent beta test earned between $50 and $125 a month, some of the platform’s most popular – and prolific – writers earned more than $2,000.
Gardner said the amount of money earned by writers is determined by a combination of factors, such as number of views for stories, how many stories a writer has on the platform and the length of the story.
The company said the “strong connections” and “high engagement” between storytellers and their audience contributed to a 95% click-through rate on Wattpad Futures ads during beta testing.
Wattpad partnered with several programmatic ad networks during the test phase, but also plans to work directly with advertisers as the product rolls out, said Gardner.
Wattpad co-founder and CEO Allen Lau said Wattpad Futures enables advertisers to capitalize on the influence and reach of its storytellers, while reaching the mobile-first millennials and Generation Zs who comprise an estimated 85% of its user base.
Wattpad Futures is the latest in a series of advertising plays for Wattpad, joining programmatic ads, sponsorship and its one-year-old Brand Stories offering. The latter enables brands to enlist writers to create stories that have their brand message woven throughout.
Gardner said Wattpad had become a popular destination for film studios, while brands including Coca-Cola, General Electric and Sour Patch Kids have also used the platform.
Wattpad boasts incredibly high user engagement, with its more than 45 million users – a number that is growing by approximately 130,000 people per day –spending a combined 13 billion minutes a month on the platform.
“Our users are highly engaged,” said Gardner. “This isn’t just a few seconds looking at an image or watching a quick video clip. They’re spending over 30 minutes with the content. People feel like these writers are their friends, and it’s a great opportunity for brands to take advantage of this type of attention.”
The company reportedly paid out more than $1 million to its writers in 2015, a number that is expected to grow as it continues to developed its branded content expertise.
