Based in Los Angeles, Snapchat revealed in an IPO registration filed on Thursday that its users consume 10 billion videos on daily basis as against the 8 billion videos Facebook claimed in late 2015 that its users watch daily, The Wall Street Journal reports.
This video-user rate among other technologies playing out with Snapchat is fast making it a TV of sort for users, even though it is primarily a messaging app that is fast becoming a growing media company.
Considering that the way its billions of videos are stringed together into stories is making the messaging app a new kind of TV, its video clips last an average 10 seconds but strung together to make a continuous viewing experience that lasts several minutes. All a user needs do is just to lean back and enjoy the viewing experience the way television is watched with little to no interruptions.
To make the viewing experience more enjoyable, users get to watch videos of friends just as if they were watching a reality TV show of people they really know. The only unfortunate thing that may be reviewed later in the future is that users can’t provide feedback or comment on the Snapchat video stories they watch, unlike Facebook and Instagram platforms where users can provide social feedback.
It must also be pointed out that video ads are used to monetize Snapchat TV-like service, and it works more or less like the 15- or 30-second pre-roll ads playing before YouTube videos are played out. However, just like YouTube videos, the entire ad can be skipped and not watched before the actual videos start. To this extent, Snapchat charges advertisers less for video ads that are skipped or swiped away by users than it does for those that are watched in its entirety.
Snapchat reports that it has about 160 million daily users and it posted $404 million in revenue for 2016 with plans to make $1 billion earnings in 2017. Being approved in its proposed initial public offering would help Snapchat a lot in this direction.
“Unlike Twitter, Snapchat is continuing to advance and deepen what you can do on mobile, and that’s attracting users and brands,” says Catherine Boyle, an analyst at eMarketer.