Popular messaging app Snapchat allows media brands to publish content for all users.

Snapchat, an app most popular with teenagers, allows media brands to publish content via the 'Discover' section.

Brands including MTV, Vice, Mail Online, and National Geographic (to name but a few) use the Discover section of Snapchat, which has the potential to reach a massive global audience.

Other brands have chosen to use Snapchat with a personal account, as an extension of the newsroom or marketing departments.

Personal Snapchat accounts require none of the work needed to set up a Discover account, as the latter allows brands to post interactive articles, videos, photos, or graphics while the former only allows non-interactive photos and videos.

Vox Media has a Snapchat Discover channel, and director of platform partnerships Choire Sicha said: “Organic Snapchat does not do as well as Discover, but personal accounts are a true labor of love and fun to experiment with, where our brands can express themselves in cool ways.”

Snapchat Discover has strict rules on how much content a publisher must create daily, and how it should look, while with a personal account none of these rules apply.

With a Snapchat Discover account, brands can expect to reach more than 1 million viewers per day. Cosmopolitan claims to reach an average of 3 million viewers.

In comparison to this, personal accounts only reach to the tens of thousands.