24 February 2015
Ben Thompson on Snapchat:
And so we are back to Snapchat’s rumored $19 billion valuation; it has nothing to do with “stealing teens” from Facebook, but rather the decline of TV viewership (again, a separate question from cord-cutting).
Brands:
Want to reach young people Value immersive engagement that enables emotional connections View tracking as a “nice-to-have” (as opposed to a “must-have” for direct marketing)
Here is what Snapchat offers:
Nearly 200 million monthly active users, including greater than 50% penetration among users 18-24 (33% among users 18-34), and those numbers continue to grow rapidly Very immersive ads that can only be viewed by holding your finger on the screen; brands can have a very high confidence their message is being viewed Not a single bit of tracking. No gender, no age, nothing
I’ve long believed that Snapchat has been misunderstood by non-users and people outside of it’s core demographic. To put it simply, Snapchat is about convenience. It’s easy to send a picture to specific people, it’s easy to flip over to the ESPN page in Discovery.
The Discovery feature was obviously introduced as a way to potentially bring in revenue and Ben Thompson does an excellent job of breaking down where those eye-balls will come from to potentially make Snapchat the $19 billion company it believes to be.