With analytics, Snapchat to give ad-creators improved insights

Social-networking platform Snapchat is aiming to help brands target ads and get better data on their advertising campaigns. With more than 187 million daily active users globally watching over 10 billion videos per day on its platform, the firm has brought in analytics for content creators to help build their presence.

The app’s digital marketing primarily targets 18-30-year-olds and currently has an estimated 16 million young users in India, a major advertising target for brands.

Retaining creators

Snapchat’s new analytic tools are designed to make the platform more appealing to brands, and will offer consumers performance-tracking as well as more detailed audience breakdowns. Statistics will include view counts and engagement time, as well as audience data such as age, gender and location.

“This rollout for Snapchat creators who are either part of its official stories programme or have a huge following, is meant to retain creators on the platform, and drive meaningful engagements with their respective communities and followers,” says Rubeena Singh, Chief Executive Officer, iProspect India, the digital agency of Dentsu Aegis Network.

With this, the social-media platform is also likely to become more attractive to advertisers, especially since more than 400 million Snapchat stories are created per day around the world, and more than 20,000 photos are shared every second.

In India too, Gen Y loves the millennial’s app and disappearing photo-sharing platform, and are intent on creating stories to share with friends, adding a kaleidoscope of colourful filters, mixed in with its popular flowery crowns and beautiful rainbows and face-swapping effects, to their pictures.

“A social network cannot sustain without advertisements. It is the only revenue model,” says Shrenik Gandhi, CEO and co-founder of White Rivers Media, a digital marketing agency. “Moreover, a social network brand cannot sustain if ads are not shown to the right audience,” he adds.

Snapchat gained 10 million new daily active users in Q4 2017, raising the total from 178 million to 187 million. During the same period, the company’s revenue grew 72 per cent to $285.7 million.

In India too, the audience is growing. Data shows the total advertisable audience size in India is 7.05 million, while for the US it is 92 million.

Almost 94 per cent of its users in India are aged between 13-34, watching billions of videos in the app created to help people communicate through short videos and images.

“Content creation on other social-media sites has dropped and consumption has gone down, too” says Gandhi. “India-specific data shows the 18-20 age category on Snapchat is the most populated with 1.75 million people. Moreover, the audience is highly urban and has high disposable income. These are impressive figures. Snapchat has the highest engaged audience than any other social-media platform out there,” he insists.

Citing statistics, he says an average Indian Snapchatter opens the app more than 18 times a day, and spends 25-30 minutes using the app daily.

More importantly, Gandhi says, 60 per cent of users create new stories rather than consuming their friends stories, generating new content that brands can engage with, and which users are keen to track.

“Until now, Snapchat creators could gauge engagement only on the basis of view counts on their post, with no granular insight such as audience demographic, reach, interest, view time,” says iProspect’s Singh.

“This improved understanding of audience (with analytics) will be beneficial for brands as well, since they would know which influencer’s follower base has high overlap with their target audience,” she adds.

End of last year, the social app rolled out its marketing application programming interface (API) that it hopes will usher in a new wave of advertisers and revenue. By giving access to its ad-buying platform and ensuring more data, the app is providing a platform for consumers to invite brands into their personal conversations.

“Snapchat recently opened its APIs for the Indian market,” says Gandhi.

“Given the fact that data consumption has grown five times in the last year, from 25 crore GB in early 2017 to 125 crore GB now, the increase in a digitally mature market is not something that can be ignored any longer,” he adds.

Redesign

Incidentally, Snapchat recently redesigned the app making the distinction between friends and brands clearer. Though many of its users, both in India and globally, have reacted overwhelmingly negatively to the visual changes, brands continue to use the medium.

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