Recently in the social media world, Snapchat stole Twitter’s crown. It was announced that Snapchat has more daily users than Twitter does nowadays. Snapchat reported that 150 million people use their app each day, which is an increase of 40 million from just December.
Snapchat has allowed companies access to their mass amounts of users, but it comes at a hefty price. Snapchat has recently proven though that their high sticker price is worth the reach and influence. Especially if your brand is targeting millennials.
Many people are familiar with the “lens” feature Snapchat has introduced. The lens overlays you can put on your face range from dog ears to wrinkly skin to rainbows pouring out of your mouth. Within the past year, Snapchat has been allowing companies to purchase these lenses. Snapchat allows brands to design and buy a filter to place on their app for one day. Costs for this can range between $350,000 and $750,000 depending on the day.
Companies like Taco Bell, Gatorade and FOX have all gotten in on the action. In fact, Taco Bell broke the record for user engagement with their sponsored lens. Their “taco head” lens appeared for 24 hours on Cinco de Mayo and acquired 224 million views. It was reported that the average user interacted with their lens for 24 seconds before sending a snapchat with the filter. Additionally, 20th Century Fox recently bought out the entire line of lenses for one day. The lenses promoted the new X-Men film with each one represented different characters. Gatorade naturally snatched up a spot for the 2016 Super Bowl with lenses representing both teams.
Aside from the success, the most interesting part about this feature is that Snapchat has presented companies with the golden opportunity among consumers: engaging with a brand and sharing it with others.
The combination of engagement and sharing is something other social media platforms haven’t quite nailed yet. While other platforms work on figuring this out, Snapchat is busy sandwiching ads among users’ stories and enlisting Oracle to further prove their success. With no signs of slowing down, Snapchat is quickly climbing to the top of the social media world.
Would you encourage clients to start allocating ad dollars towards a Snapchat campaign?