Snap’s Q1 Results Show Slow User Growth
Snapchat parent company Snap Inc. recorded a revenue of $149.6 million in the first quarter of 2017. The company, which filed its IPO in March, saw a 286 per cent year-over-year growth in revenue, driven primarily by strong advertiser demand.
Evan Spiegel, cofounder and CEO of Snap Inc., said in the earnings call, “During the first quarter, we focused our efforts primarily on performance and quality of our Snapchat application and automation across our content products and advertising business. We are pleased with the early results from these performance and quality improvements, particularly on Android devices. These improvements helped drive a significant increase in engagement, with now over 3 billion Snaps created every day with our cameras, generating an increase in overall sessions and time spent.”
Snapchat now has 166 million users in Q1 2017, showing a growth of 36 per cent from 122 million in Q1 2016 and 5 per cent quarter-over-quarter, from 158 million in Q4 2016. This decline in quarterly growth might have been due to its rival Facebook copying its Stories and Camera features for its family of apps.
In Q1, Snapchat more than doubled the number of new users coming from Android devices compared to Q4 2016.
Imran Khan, Chief Strategy Officer, Snap Inc. said, “On average, in Q1 our users spent over 30 minutes per day on Snapchat. This past quarter, we told over 450 Our Stories in over eight languages to our global community.”
Brand Buzz
Searching Through Lens
Pinterest added a new live visual search tool to its Lens feature — launched in March this year. The new tool will allow users to narrow their search for better results. The ideas cataloguing platform also recently added QR code recognition to Lens. “Lens has always been able to pick out different elements in whatever scene you point it at, but now it’s even easier to search between multiple objects. When you Lens your friend’s street style, or their living room, you just tap a guide to narrow your search and dive deeper into specifics,” said Kelei Xu of Pinterest in an official post.
Dig The Data
The Big Trend
According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), the average annual ad spend around original digital video content — defined as being professionally produced for digital consumption — will be $4.4 million for 2017, nearly doubling from $2.4 million in 2015. To arrive at that finding, the IAB surveyed 358 marketing and media buying professionals — with about half working at agencies and half on the client side — who manage annual ad spends larger than $1 million. Video is a hot space across the board, the trade organisation found, with the average digital/mobile video ad spend increasing 67 per cent from 2015 to $9.4 million this year.
LEADER
Paul Krugman
@paulkrugman
Nobel laureate
“I have thought all along that Trump was a legitimacy crisis waiting to happen. But so soon, so dramatically? Wow”
Harish Bijoor
@harishbijoor
Owner, Harish Bijoor Consults
“iTHINK:#Telcos in #India need to stop the unethical & greedy practice of automatically causing subscriptions for VAS on prepaid SIM cards!”
