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Snapchat's rapidly growing user and advertiser activity and the significant decline in personal posts on Facebook and Instagram are spurring talk of a shift in the balance of power between the social-media heavyweights.
But these concerns are overblown, according to a research note from Deutsche Bank analysts cited by Business Insider. Facebook's size, messaging strength, and Instagram's growing roster of advertisers are major advantages.
However, there are certain areas in which Snapchat excels, and these strengths should concern Facebook:
- Soaring personal sharing, daily video views. In April, sources familiar with Snapchat's internal data claim that 10 billion video views are occurring daily on the app, with over one-third of users sharing "Stories"— visual updates that stay up for 24 hours — every day, Bloomberg reports. This means that Snapchat has overtaken Facebook in terms of daily video views, even despite its smaller user base, and this will undoubtedly help Snapchat attract valuable video ad dollars.
- Augmented reality filters and innovative ad formats. Snapchat has been a pioneer in augmented reality (AR), allowing users to overlay visual and location-based filters on their photos. This is an area that Facebook has been trying to move into earnestly, as illustrated by its acquisition of the photo-filter company Msqrd in March. Yet AR has yet to fully take off on Facebook, which means that Snapchat is better placed to attract advertisers who wish to use modern AR-oriented ad formats like sponsored filters and geo-tags.
- Popularity among young millennials. Snapchat ranks as "the most important social network" to teens, according to a survey by investment bank Piper Jaffray as cited by Business Insider. This was the first time that Snapchat supplanted Instagram, but only by a slim margin: 28% of teens see Snapchat as the most important social network as of Spring 2016, compared to 27% for Instagram.
- Snapchat’s ad effectiveness. A recent study found that ads on Snapchat performed far better than ads on other social media platform. This performance was measured by the following metrics: visual attention, or the amount of time a user spent watching the ad; emotional response, or how deeply a user reacted to an ad; and purchase intent, or how much of ap positive influence the ad had on a user’s path to purchase. Also, nearly two-thirds of Snapchat’s videos are seen with the sound on, compared to Facebook where only 15% of videos are played with sound.
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