Will SnapchatBe Able to Win Over Its Rivals by Its Data Play
Snapchat has been in news for quite some time now as it came with the largest IPO of $3.2 billion, which was the largest one in last five years after Facebook. Again the IPO offered non-voting shares, a feat that no one ever attempted in the past. Some of the analysts were wondering if people will apply for the shares that have no say, but the IPO was oversubscribed multiple times.
The listing was also explosive on the New York Stock exchange with shares surging 44 percent higher than the issue price of $17. The very next day, they went up further 20% and all this happened despite the fact that the company is making huge losses; in 2016 alone, it was $514 million.
The euphoria seems to have settled down a bit now and Wall Street investors look unsure if Snapchat is truly the wave of the future or is it just a flash in the pan. The app executives, on the other hand, are totally focused on expanding the app’s appeal to various brands especially the direct response-minded companies.
The digital marketing consultant, David Deal said, “Snapchat has a perfect opportunity to become a direct response powerhouse, especially for location-based marketing to millennials. Though Snapchat needs to mine data about millennials more effectively to beat Facebook and Instagram.”
Though Facebook is a big company, it considers Snapchat as its strong rival and that is precisely the reason that in the past nine months it has cloned the key Snapchat feature four times. To distinguish itself in the market, Snapchat is coming up with Data Play.
From today onwards, the millennial marketers will have the privilege of zeroing in on Snapchat users who are most likely to download their brand’s app. Snapchat has some 160 million users on its platform and to target from this huge customer base who actually will be interested in a particular app will be a big boon for the companies. This is because the app-installed ads allow these marketers to set cost-per-download goals.
The director of performance marketing, Pocket Gems, David Rose said, “Given the high levels of engagement we’re seeing, the results are strong enough to increase our app-install budget for Snapchat.”
Snap’s director of monetization product, Peter Sellis explained that the company was testing its machine learning and audience-segmenting capabilities through a beta version, which went live in October. The new system is a cost-efficient way to drive app installs that are made from Snapchat and charges the ad buyers on cost-per-thousand-impressions.
It looks like the new system is going to help Snapchat make a dent in the earnings of the rivals.