Snapchat’s Critical Mass: What That Means For 2016 Campaigns
During caucus season, the Des Moines International Airport is a bit like the “Star Wars cantina bar” for political junkies; as I made my way to my gate earlier this year, my experience served as no exception.
Walking near two Senators from both political parties, one of whom was running for President, I saw a different kind of news celebrity. Peter Hamby. A former CNN host, who had since taken to running news content on an emerging social platform. Multiple times, young voters walked past all the others to approach Peter, “Aren’t you the Snapchat guy? I love your show.”
It struck me that audience behaviors were shifting — even within the social and mobile categories. Changes like this don’t happen overnight, but they have important implications for effective political strategy.
Snapchat, like politics, is about sharing stories of the world around us. It is fast becoming the platform of choice for millions of Americans to share their stories; sophisticated political campaigns can no longer afford to ignore Snapchat, it has reached the critical mass necessary to turn the platform into a vital tool to build and activate a political coalition.
Let’s begin with the statistics.
Over one-hundred and fifty million people use Snapchat daily, delivering over 10 billion videos to users every day.
It has become a major platform for communicating with the 18–34 age demographic, reaching 41 percent of that audience every day. Yet, it is important to note that Snapchat’s adoption is surging across all age categories — in the past year, it’s usage has more than quadrupled among those 35 and older.
All social ads are not created equal.
Snapchat’s use of the entire vertical screen — a made-for-mobile viewing experience — provides up to 9x higher completion rates than the horizontal mobile videos found in an old-school news feed.
Critically, more than two-thirds of its videos are viewed with audio, which has important impacts on the overall effectiveness of the ads.
Not only does this mean that people are actually watching — and hearing — your video content all the way to the end, but these viewers are also significantly more likely to respond to your call to action. The engagement rate for Snap Ads is five-times higher than the typical engagement rate on comparable platforms.
A recent study by MediaScience, used biometric testing, eye-tracking and exit surveys to measure content effectiveness. The results were striking: Snapchat garnered twice the visual attention of Facebook and 1.5 times more than Instagram — leading to increased emotional responses and purchase intent.
The private-sector recognizes this trend. According to a report by eMarketer, more senior ad buyers are planning to begin advertising on Snapchat than any other social media site.
Spotify’s recent “Year in Music” campaign leveraged Snap Ads to promote their platform. According to Millward Brown Digital Insights, Spotify experienced ad recall rates 1.5 times more effective than mobile norms, leading to significantly higher brand favorability and subscription intent.
As for Peter Hamby, his Good Luck America series within Snapchat’s Discover platform is turning news video on its head — fully-optimized for mobile, shot vertically and fast-paced. It almost feels like watching the early days of television news, as rapid experimentation takes advantage of what makes mobile unique and quickly becomes best practices to the medium itself. Newsmakers would be smart to engage with the show, content creators would be smart to learn from it.
Bottom line: Snapchat has become a major player in effectively reaching audiences and it is growing exponentially. It should comprise an increasingly important component of your content strategy, both paid and organic — alongside YouTube pre-roll and intent-based search engine marketing.
