Snapchat's ad sales are down. Image credit: Snap
Despite Snapchat’s attempts to lure advertisers to its platform, they overwhelmingly prefer Instagram in terms of ad buying.
The Facebook-owned platform has dwarfed Snapchat, with 90 percent of respondents to a survey conducted by Cowen indicating they prefer to advertise on Instagram over Snapchat, as reported by Business Insider. This data should be worrisome to Snapchat, which has increasingly lost favor with advertisers as Instagram’s star has risen.
Ad sales
Snapchat’s overall advertising revenue has fallen short recently.
While early on advertisers were enamored with Snapchat’s large audience of young people, the platform’s advertising prospects have fallen short of many expectations.
According to Cowen’s report, 47 percent of advertisers are spending much less on Snapchat ads than they had anticipated.
Google has also taken the Stories format with AMP Stories. Image credit: Google
In fact, Snapchat was ranked second to last behind other platforms for advertising desirability.
Part of this comes from Instagram’s wildly successful Stories feature, a format that it took from Snapchat. However, Instagram has been able to monetize an arguably similar feature to a degree that Snapchat has not achieved with its own Stories feature.
Snapchat is aware of the disparity between it and Instagram. Reports from February said that the platform had been offering advertisers working with Instagram free video ads on Snapchat as an enticement to give its platform a try.
Snapchat's efforts
After its big redesign last year was met with massive consumer backlash, Snapchat has essentially rolled back many of the major changes, hoping to appeal to both its users and advertisers.
Snapchat has struggled with monetization in recent months, particularly as its competitors continually ape and improve on its core features, such as Instagram’s popular version of the Stories format. Now, the platform is hoping that giving in to user demand will help win back the crowd (see story).
Snapchat Spectacles have not captured advertisers' attention either. Image credit: Snap
Additionally, Snapchat is working to open up its platform to be more accessible to outside brands and applications thanks to a development kit.
According to a report from TechCrunch, the social media platform will be allowing outside developers to use its augmented reality camera in certain applications. The opening up of the platform to third parties was a strategy that helped propel Facebook to prominence in 2010, but whether this move will work the same way for Snapchat remains to be seen (see story).
For the moment, Snapchat trails far behind its rival Instagram. The data compiled by Cowen paints a grim picture for the platform as it seeks to distinguish itself from competitors and lure back some of the advertisers who have abandoned it.