Are Instagram Stories Hurting Snapchat?

Since its initial release in 2011, Snapchat has worked to establish itself as a competitor of Facebook. The social media giant released the Instagram Stories feature in response.

As reported by AdWeek, Instagram Stories now has 200 million daily users. When compared to Snapchat’s 158 million daily users, it appears that Instagram Stories is winning the hearts of Millennials. However, new data released by Episode suggests this is not true.

Women aged 13 through 25 make up the majority of users on Snapchat. Episode reports that 69 percent of these women said they do not use Snapchat any less since Instagram Stories was released. So how does Instagram Stories have more daily users?

The key lies in Instagram Stories’ definition of a user. Anyone who either posts a story or clicks on one is considered a user. So an Instagram account with a large following can generate many users with a single Story post.

Despite the addition of Stories to Instagram, Snapchat is far from dead. In fact, seven percent of Episode’s respondents said they still send between 50 and 100 snaps daily. Nine percent send more than 100 snaps per day.

Advertisers should not be so quick to give up on Snapchat as the engaging app maintains its popularity among teenage girls and young women. 

Snapchat: Growth Charts, Name Changes, and Recording Glasses

Snapchat has experienced substantial growth in the social world and it doesn’t look to be slowing down anytime soon. In fact, Snapchat is moving up the ranks in terms of users, popularity, and time spent on the app.

Snapchat made an announcement last week regarding their branding change and the new name of their company, Snap Inc.

This name change is for the company as a whole, as the app will still be referred to as Snapchat. The new name was rolled out alongside a new product that eliminates the “chat” feature.

Snap’s new product is video recording sunglasses which let customer’s record experiences from a first person viewpoint. The glasses record 10 second videos with a simple finger tap. Videos are then sent to the app via Wi-Fi or Bluetooth connection.

Snap Inc., while slowly rolling out more advertisements within their app, are also opening doors for new opportunities within their new product. 

The Unclear Yet Promising Future of Advertising on Snapchat

It is no real surprise that Snapchat is becoming increasingly popular in the social world. I can still remember when I first downloaded the app and saw no point in sending a picture that my friend could only view for ten seconds or less. A few years later and you can still send short pictures to your friends, but you can also send videos, make stories, follow celebrities, watch clips from live events, read Wall Street Journal articles, and much more. The Snapchat world has taken off and advertising with the growing network is ready for launch.

Currently, you can watch paid videos from a select group of companies in the Discover tab where you see their stories and read their articles. Companies can also advertise with sponsored geo-filters that users can use for 24 hours. The rest of the advertising possibilities are still in the preparation phase.

Snapchat has tossed around the idea of improving ad targeting in the Discover portal to track the content that each user is specifically viewing and then following their off-site browsing and searching activity. This is an upgrade from Snapchat’s current strategy of targeting ads based on what channels people are checking out.

Moat, a third party measurement company, has become of interest to Snapchat who wishes to track the success of their advertisers better. Currently, there is no length tracking on “views” to see how long a user actually views an ad for. For example, one user could click on an ad and immediately click off while another user clicks on the ad and watches the whole thing. According to Snapchat’s current measurements, both are considered a “view”. By partnering with Moat (as Facebook and YouTube have already done) Snapchat will be able to assure their advertisers that they are getting the biggest bang for their buck, or at least let them know how long users are keeping with their ad.

Lastly, Snapchat is contemplating with the idea of a redesigned feed to combine personal stories, Discover, and Live and Local Stories. This redesigned feed would have a back-end algorithm to personalize each feed to each user.

While many of these advancements are still in the developmental stage, the future for Snapchat is promising with opportunities for growth and expansion through advertising.