No, 6 Billion Daily Video Views Doesn’t Mean Snapchat = Facebook
This week, Snapchat revealed that it’s seeing over 6 billion video views every day on its platform, and last week, Facebook said it’s seeing 8 billion daily video views.
So that number means Snapchat is gaining on Facebook, right? Wrong.
These are huge amounts of traffic and milestones that they should both be proud of — but pretending these two measurements are equivalent is totally misleading. As an industry we have to understand that not every social video view is equal.
Snapchat is a great platform with huge engagement, and essentially a fully opt-in platform. But Snaps are much more closely compared to a photo view than a video view. Snaps have a maximum of 10 seconds and you can rack up a high number of views by quickly going through a Snapchat Story (a video view on Snapchat is counted immediately upon the Snap loading, with no consideration for view duration).
Snapchat is an extremely valuable platform in its own way, but the video views just aren’t the same as they are on platforms like Facebook and YouTube, where longer form videos also live.
Even between the latter two platforms, we see huge differences in the value of video views. Facebook views come in vast majority on the News Feed, where they’re delivered to users and are considered a view after 3 seconds; YouTube counts paid views after 30 seconds and unpaid views after 3 seconds. When we look at a benchmark of video views we could for example say that a YouTube view is roughly 2-5x more valuable than a Facebook view, depending on the length.
One video view on Snapchat does not equal one video view on Facebook, does not equal one video view on YouTube. These views are all measured differently and have a different context within each social platform.
So how should we measure and compare videos then?
Focusing on deeper measurements like impressions, view duration, and view-through rates is one way. It’s really important that marketers look deeper into metrics than to video views, and stop comparing views on different platforms. They’re not the same, and they can’t just be put side by side.
?? Award Winning Corporate Podcasts and Podcast Guesting Specialist
9 年"It’s really important that marketers look deeper into metrics than to video views, and stop comparing views on different platforms." - well said
VP Market Development EMEA & Global Strategy
9 年Might add that one further important differentiator is the profile of users. Youtube and Facebook pretty "mainstream" and Snapchat almost entirely consumed by the elusive millennials... which interestingly is a demo that FB is struggling to reach.
Unicorn is a state of mind
9 年Totally agree Anas Almarie The discussion we had in the session that Snapchat, Inc. is not social platform rather than video texting application where the majority of its usage for non-social activities. We had a twitter vote where 65% of participants voted for snapchat is NOT a social platform. Greta article, and thank you for the mention
I breathe digital | AI & Human-Powered Marketing | University Lecturer, Keynote Speaker, Digital Marketing Trainer, LinkedIn? Trainer.
9 年Couldn't agree more Jan, thoughtful insights on numbers that can be very misleading! Many consider Snapchat, not a Social Platform as well, and I personally see the Snapchat's content is way behind YouTube & Facebook videos. Lewa please share your thoughts that you've discussed at Social Media Strategist course by NISM via Ammar M. poll on Twitter.