Oct 23, 2014
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Current Event:
Snapchat Releases its First Advertisments
Facebook was introduced to the social media market in 2004 and from there swept the world. IT offered much more than the commonly used email, with status updates, photos, blog linking and much more to identify individuals. Today Facebook has over 1.23 billion active monthly users.
Then came Twitter. Introduced in 2006, just two years after Facebook, Twitter made the world one big conversation. It began as just being able to tell people what you are doing right now, however, now it has evolved into a powerful tool for marketing and has easy access to trending topics.
Today however, Facebook and twitter and being pushed aside by users for another social messaging application, Snapchat. Snapchat launched in 2011 and is taking the world by storm. Why? Unlike Twitter and Facebook, people can send photos, videos and messages that only last for a few minutes and then disappear. This makes for less clutter on your phone and more confidentiality with material you share. Also, you don’t have the annoyance of people commenting and judging, which is commonly seen on Facebook posts and the content shared feels more like real life, a quick interaction and then its done.
Facebook tried to buy Snapchat for $3 billion dollars back in 2013 and Google tried to buy it for $4 billion. These offers were turned down and now it is estimated that Snapchat is worth $10 billion.
Up until now, Snapchat has been ad free, which users love. However, just last weekend Snapchat released its first ads. Why? Well, Snapchat themselves put it bluntly, “We need to make money”. Not surprising motivation by any means, but Snapchat promises that the ads will still be optional to watch. They will only appear under the “Recent Updates” section and will disappear after a maximum of 24 hours whether they have been viewed or not.
Marketers are watching this new medium closely because Snapchat has estimated 100 million monthly active users. If the launching of ads doesn’t disrupt user satisfaction and is positive, Snapchat stands to make a serious amount of cash in advertising.