The announcement of Snapchat’s IPO late in 2016 revealed some impressive numbers and growth. Over 2.5 billion Snaps are created by 158 million users each day, and the company’s revenue has increased six fold since 2015.
WhatsApp’s Status feature has been enhanced for Android, iPhone and Windows to use photos, videos, and GIF images to create messages that again bear a striking resemblance to Snapchat’s Stories feature. And according to the company blog, it is the biggest fundamental change to the core features of how people use the app.
So for the second time it seems social media leader Facebook has decided to clone one of Snapchat’s key features for another of it’s own platforms — in this case social messaging service WhatsApp.
While WhatsApp is very popular in almost all parts of the world apart from the United States of America, Snapchat has huge traction in the same country, boasting a daily user base of more than 100 million people.
On the other hand, WhatsApp reports that it has a monthly active user base of more than 900 million people, which makes it the most followed messaging app in the world right now.
Snapchat for Advertisers
Snapchat is testing two new features for advertisers: deep linking and web auto-fill.
Deep linking enables Snapchat users to swipe up and tap a link, which will bring them to a specific place within another application, such as a playlist in a music app or a product page in an e-commerce app.
And web auto-fill enables users to complete lead-generation forms and opt to automatically use the personal information contained within when that information is required to sign up for products or services, sparing them the difficulty of repeatedly entering their details on smartphones.
The debate of when WhatsApp will start monetizing its services is already taking shape now. On the other hand, Snapchat is looking at much better ways of which its marketers can better buy as well as target their ads in a bid to improve its earning.
Whatsapp for Advertisers
As more and more people join WhatsApp, it sends a different message to marketers who are looking for ways to engage these huge user bases. SMS marketing is no longer the thing as people are turning to richer content such as photos, videos and so on. WhatsApp leads the way when it comes to exchanging text messages.
Small businesses can easily create campaigns utilizing WhatsApp and a dedicated employee to quickly respond to customers during the campaign. In 2013, Klik, an Israeli chocolate brand saw a 10x rise in brand interaction and a 51.8% increase in engagement on Facebook with one WhatsApp campaign directed at teens using WhatsApp.
