It was reported back in 2013 that Snapchatrejected a $3 billion bid from Facebook to buy the photo and video social media company. Now, two years later, that decision is looking increasingly justified, as Snapchat has reached 6 billion video views per day, according to theFinancial Times, trailing just behind Facebook’s 8 billion.
The number is made even more impressive considering it’s triple the 2 billion daily video views company CEO Evan Spiegel reported to Bloomberg back in May, just 6 months ago. At the time, Facebook was doubling Snapchat’s video views, but now the photo messenger has caught up, generating roughly 75 percent of the video views Facebook does.
Video content advertising is one of the most profitable bastions of social media, and it’s an area where Snapchat is seeing tremendous growth. As a result of the platform’s increased advertiser-friendliness through video ads and media partnerships, it was earlier this year valued at up to $19 billion.
There may be something of a discrepancy, with different platforms having different gauges for what constitutes a “view.” A user would have to watch a YouTube video for 30 seconds for Google to count it as a view, whereas Facebook counts anything over 3 seconds. Meanwhile, a video just needs to be loaded for Snapchat to count it as a view.
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For that reason, advertisers have reportedly become concerned that the ads they pay for are only beingplayed by viewers for less than a second. Even so, the 6 billion daily video views will serve as an even more valuable bargaining chip for the company.
The good news also comes after something of a controversy earlier this month, which saw Snapchat going on the defensive after changes to its privacy policy caused confusion among users, who were concerned that their photos and videos were being stored on the Californian company’s servers.
Snapchat published a blog post clarifying its changes, reassuring its 100 million daily users that photo messages “are automatically deleted from our servers once we detect that they have been viewed or have expired.”
Date: November 8, 2015