Will Snapchat outplay Facebook as the most advertiser-friendly social media platform? Well, it could be as video messaging application has reached 6 billion views per day, trailing behind Facebook's 8 billion. While Facebook's figure just doubled from 4 billion in April, Snapchat has tripled from 2 billion since May.
With the latest figures, Snapchat seemed to have made the right decision when CEO Evan Spiegel turned down a $3 billion offer from Facebook to acquire the company in 2013. Now, it is slowly closing the gap with the social media giant. According to Reuters, Snapchat has confirmed the 6 billion figure but declined to comment further on the news.
Video content advertising is one of the most profitable bastions of social media, thus social networking sites are vying for attention in the fast-growing video segment. It is also an area where Snapchat is seeing tremendous growth. And because of the company's rising advertiser-friendliness through video ads and media partnerships, it was valued at up to $19 billion earlier this 2015.
There may be some discrepancy, however, since different social media platforms have varied measures for what is considered as a "view." CNET noted that a user should watch a YouTube video for 30 seconds before Google can count it as a view, while Facebook counts anything over 3 seconds. In Snapchat, on the other hand, it just needs a video to be loaded to count it as a view.
As a result, advertisers have reportedly become increasingly concerned that the ads they pay for are only being viewed for less than a second. Nonetheless, Snapchat's 6 billion daily video views still serve as more valuable trading asset for the company.
Meanwhile, Snapchat's 6 billion daily views came after the company faced a controversy earlier this month. The video messaging application went on the defensive after the alterations on its privacy policy sparked confusion among users, who were alarmed that their photos and videos were being stored on the company's servers. Fortunately, the company clarified its changes and reassured its 100 million daily users that photo messages "are automatically deleted" from their servers once the company "detect that they have been viewed or have expired."
Snapchat is indeed turning into the hottest social tool for ad agencies as its disappearing posts offer a playful environment for reflecting an agency's culture, which is just the kind of content that works best for recruiting efforts, unlike those of more established platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
"On Snapchat, the risks are a lot lower. It's a place where we can experiment and have some fun," MRY CMO David Berkowitz said, as per Adweek. "It's not as high profile as Facebook or Twitter where people scrutinize every word and you have to represent the brand."
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