A new report from The Daily Beast takes a look at secrecy at Snapchat and also shares a rare look at some leaked internal metrics from the social media service’s performance. The new data indicates why Snapchat moved so quickly on a redesign and is working on new approaches to lift its ad rates.
After a rough Q3 last year, Snapchat shared that a new “disruptive” design would be coming to the social media platform, while also acknowledging that the app can be difficult to use.
Then, at the end of November, the company unveiled the redesign with a limited release following that week (Snapchat still hasn’t rolled out the redesign to all users).
CEO Evan Spiegel told investors a few weeks back that the new design is meant to make the app easier to use which should attract new users, although the company expects short term disruption as existing users react to the new app.
Other changes that come with the new design include better separation of the friends and media sections. Although this may improve the user experience, there is disagreement at Snapchat whether or not this will hurt ad views/rates. But there could be opportunity to increase ad views by placing Stories and Snaps in the same place, while putting Snap Map into the discover section.
Snapchat is known for its secrecy, seemingly on level with Apple, and doesn’t share specifics when it comes to public statements and even internally.
Employees, partners, and investors have been kept in the dark about how well (or poorly) many key features of the app are doing.
That’s changed now that The Daily Beast has shared a pile of internal data and graphs. Included are some interesting details about what has been successful, what has flopped, and what Snapchat users use the service for most.
Snap Map initially seemed to be quite popular, but data shows that the feature declined quickly from a peak of about 35 million daily users to under 20 million as of September 16th.
Details on daily Story posts by unique users shows a slight decline from April to September 2017.
The most used Snapchat feature is messaging, with users sending an average of 34 a day. More positive news is growth when it comes to daily Snaps sent.
Another way Snapchat may increase its profitability include forcing users to watch at least three seconds of an ad before skipping. It is also testing AR Trial Ads program in addition to Promoted Stories in attempts to boost its ad rates.
There’s no official word on when the new redesign will rollout to all users. We’ll have to wait and see what the revamp will do the for secretive social media platform.
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