How Facebook has used Instagram to beat Snapchat
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
Yes, Zuck tries to destroy Snapchhat but close to it? No way. Slowing their growth? Yes and this was expected.
Instagram is winning this space? IDK, I only know that Instagram ads perform 10x worse than FB ads. After many test drives I've never touched them again. The only ones who are monetizing on Instagram are those shiny influencers. Paired with the current brand dillution (glossy Instagram vs not so glossy stories) I am not so sure about Instagram's long-term success.
Snapchat has still a much better feature set plus much higher stickiness with direct messaging than Instagram plus a consistent DNA. Finally, Instagram has many, many liking bots (feels like Twitter before the fall).
BTW, stories only work on Instagram while on Meesenger and the FB app they are not used by anyone (at least in my cricles).
If Instagram and Snapchat continue to evolve to have similar formats, wouldn't the ads be expected to perform similarly?
Because I think that a claim to broad and generic to be said like that.
If it were true and known by someone in the industry there might be competitive advantage to not making the knowledge widely known. I.e., advertising agency can show better overall performance by knowing where to place clients' ads.
A lot of supposition here, but just throwing out some reasons why something like this may be 100% true and provable without being documented as such.
But as said the results are significantly worse than on FB. I experienced 10x.
Only in one case I remember Instagram totally blowing FB out of the water - and that was on a photography related campaign in the high end sector.
But I can tell you that my CTRs were 10x lower compared to FB (0.15%-0.2% vs 1.5% (Unique Link CTR)) on average on categories and visuals matching Instagram followers/style/DNA. It's funny, some campaigns should have performed better on Instagram than on FB because the campaigns just matched the shiny Instagram style and consumer behavior. Nope.
Happy to hear other experiences.
The thing is, we don't use Instagram on every brand we work with - because the audience isn't there, or it's there but their usage behavior is completely different on this channel when compared to other more effective media channels.
Even if you mimic IG style, IG users aren't that prone to leave the app by clicking on outside links. This may sound cheesy, but on FB people are waiting for relevant content to come to them, on IG people are looking for inspiration.
We use it mainly for branding, and it works great for that. So Clicks/CTR to website isn't the best KPI for this platform imo.
If people are looking for inspiration on IG, isn't there some kind of follow-on action that they would like to take after browsing (eg. viewing a product in an e-commerce store)?
My hypothesis is that IG is somewhat analogous to reading a magazine. I pick the magazine I like to read (analogous to choosing who to follow on IG), and when I chance upon something nice, I may have a desire to buy it. It follows that the same decision-making process could happen on IG.
Does that sound logical? If not, where am I going wrong?
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2016-11-30/confessio...
People use Snapchat to share candid photos to their friends. Instagram seems way more about creating a photo-based social feed where people upload a whole range of image-based content such as quotes they like, a meal they're having, and moments they want to remember and share.
I must admit, I don't use either, but they seem like different services with a few crossover features in a similar space.
FB: https://scontent.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/19477594_10155418324...
500px: https://500px.com/photo/218120761/sunrise-on-monte-fitz-roy-...
Just like how some people can accept Facebook/Google's invasion of your privacy, while others can't.
As with most things, it is a spectrum.
When I was younger people would use MySpace to stay in touch with friends online, then for various reasons Facebook grew in popularity and people used Facebook to do basically exactly the same thing they were before on MySpace.
I don't think this is the case for Instagram and Snapchat. It's like comparing Facebook and Twitter. Twitter is where you go to share random thoughts more or less publicly to friends and followers. Alternatively, Facebook is where you go to share much more intimate content with close friends and family. And LinkedIn has a different purpose again.
One might dominate in many ways, but there is a reason why I have a public Twitter and LinkedIn and not a public Facebook. There is a reason why I post random photos and songs I like to Twitter and not to LinkedIn.
My own take is that they're both fads and we'll be talking about something else in 10 years either way.
Wait what? What a completely misleading generalization. Exact opposite in my experience if you know your product and audience well.
I have this inkling that tech press and lots of the tech community are super eager for Snapchat to be destroyed because they never understood it in the first place, dismissed it as stupid and still don't understand it and that bothers them.
If Zuck manages to destroy it then it'll confirm to them that Snapchat didn't really have any special sauce and it's fine that they didn't understand it.
...
Beware of observation bias.
When your company is where Snapchat was at the time there's a good chance you've already taken millions off the table as part of a round. Even if not, when your company has achieved that level of growth, you can feel fairly confident that you will walk away fairly wealthy in the end, and it's more interesting to continue running your own company than it is to be rolled into someone else's.
Evan Spiegel passed on a 3B offer for Snapchat, and he owns 14% of the company. Today despite the drop, Snapchat is still worth $18B and Evan is worth 4B. And he also gets to stay CEO and control the product, which is a huge benefit of staying independent.
Citation: http://www.businessinsider.com/snap-stock-price-evan-spiegel...
Hard to see that anything fb does can come close to 10x better than Snapchat. They can (already have?) achieve parity easily by copying, but that will only gain them a very gradual shift at best — nothing like the radical shift from myspace to facebook.
Regarding Myspace, I'd even suggest that they shot themselves and Facebook was well positioned and well designed to take the credit. To put it another way, I think myspace would have eventually imploded even if facebook hadn't existed. But that's wild supposition that I wouldn't claim to be able to back up with any evidence. I just know that I was 100% done with myspace long before I found fb.
Instagram is for photos you want to have long term, and which are defining your social level. And it is not for communicating
Snapchat is for communicating.
But Snapchat is just overvalued has everyone wants to have share in the futur big name of the internet, but they are far from dying ...