Snapchat, one of the most popular photo sharing apps today has filed for an IPO. Some reports are saying that the company could be worth around 25 billion dollars.
Evan Spiegel, Snapchat’s CEO, turned down a three billion dollar buyout from Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg in 2013. Spiegel has since grown the company into a photo-sharing and advertising behemoth.
The ten-second, ephemeral photo and video-sharing app is used by more than 100 million users everyday and 1 billion snaps are captured daily. If these stats aren’t jaw dropping enough, think about this.
Snapchats unique daily reach reaches 41% of all 18-34 year olds in the US everyday compared to the average individual TV Network pulling in only 6% of the same demographic.
To reiterate, 1 billion photos and videos are captured daily on the app.
Snapchat is a great mix of communication, creativity and storytelling to appeal to the younger millennial audience who can’t get enough of the app.
Snapchat’s advertising platform might be the secret sauce, however. It is a unique combination of branded video advertising and direct response. Users can swipe up on an ad and connect to an advertisers mobile site.
According to Snapchat, the swipe up rate is 5x higher than click through rates on other social media sites.
But since Snapchat offers a variety of different ad methods, businesses of all shapes and sizes can get in on the action. Some of the larger brands Such as Trolli and Shock-Top have utilized the fully immersive 10-second videos embedded after users watch a snap story.
Other advertisers are utilizing Snapchats Sponsored Lenses, which allow users to trigger animations on their face in the app. For example, the Taco Bell animation turned users faces into Tacos. These fun photos and videos were then added to users stories and sent to friends. According to Snapchat, users spent on average 20 seconds playing with these branded Lenses.
Another example of these Sponsored Lenses was Gatorade. Everybody knows the beloved Gatorade shower after a big win in sports. The Gatorade Sponsored Lenses invited everyone in on the action.
The Gatorade Lens boasted an average of 30 seconds while totaling 165 million views for the campaign.
But advertisers don’t have to have a large advertising budget to capture eyes on the platform. Sponsored geo-filters are small pieces of artwork on Snapchat that can be viewed in the advertisers customized geo-fence. A little bit of Photoshop or Illustrator skills can have local businesses in on the action to build awareness and increase foot traffic.
There are a variety of ways that businesses small and large can increase awareness and grow sales on Snapchat. With the recent launch of the Snapchat‘s “Spectacles,” there will be more opportunities to reach your target audience in new and engaging ways.