ON SNAPCHAT'S COMEBACK
Snapchat is making a comeback, and a huge one at that. The social media company’s stock jumped nearly 24% after reporting its biggest growth quarter in four year and to top it off, daily active users reached 293 million this past June, marking an annual increase of 23%,- that’s 13 million more daily users - while their revenue more than doubled to $982 million.
So why the sudden change?
For one thing, the lift on lockdowns and travel restrictions has been great for them; the app has a great appeal for people who are making digital travel diaries abroad and want to show off to their friends.
Another reason is the digital ad boom they’re experiencing as a result of the improvements they have made to their ad offerings & their higher digital ad spending. This has paid off; several brands are willing to pay top dollar for some product placement on the platform now.
Snapchat is also investing heavily in augmented reality (AR) which they’re doing with the end goal of allowing all Snapchat users to shop and virtually try on clothing en masse using their AR technology.
In the face of adversity, Snapchat hung on and in the honeymoon period of its positive earnings, Snapchat is being careful not to drop momentum, launching its biggest global campaign to date this year. Scheduled with two phases, the first stage is to encourage more users to ‘Open Your Snapchat’, with the second targeting advertisers.
The first phase of the campaign is designed to maximise its own momentum, and encourage more usage.
Snapchat says, "open Your Snapchat is an invitation for consumers and advertisers to fully dive into AR, unlocking hundreds of custom experiences localized to each market. The campaign will blanket billboards, buses, websites and everything in between in numerous major cities across the globe."
Putting the platform’s camera and AR functions at the heart of the campaign, Snapchat is making deserved noise about the significant progress it has made with its AR platform, and that presently more than 200 million users engage with AR every day, with over 200,000 creators using Lens Studio to create lenses.
The 'Open Your Snapchat' campaign will run in various markets around the world, starting with the US, UK and Mexico, before expanding to India, a key growth region for the app.
But Snapchat’s bounce-back story is just one thread in the grander tapestry of the evolution of social media companies, and we’re seeing more and more of them diversifying their offerings in order to stay used and relevant. In Snapchat’s case, it has paid off for them so far.