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With Snapchat and Facebook betting big on original videos and content creators by introducing new tools and features, experts question over the two being actual competitors in the video space.
Video is the ‘BIG’ thing today, undoubtedly, and will be, given the volume at which it is getting produced each day by millions of online users. While video marketing has witnessed exponential growth in the advertising and marketing industry, we, the daily users do not miss an opportunity to take one and upload as one of our stories on Snapchat, Instagram or Facebook.
With the rise in video, the most benefited is the content creator community as it is the one way they get their audiences engaged with top-notch content and make it popular online. Also, on the hindsight we can witness an intense race among the platforms housing these creators including the likes of Youtube, Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook. While Youtube and Instagram are considered the go-to platforms for video-making, Snapchat and Facebook have been recently introducing various tools and features to lure the content creators and launching original content.
In October this year, Snapchat launched ‘Snap Original’s -the debut of serialised Shows, including its first formal slate of scripted Shows and Docuseries. Building upon its successful vertical video content platform designed exclusively for mobile, Snap is aiming to move mobile TV forward with series from some of the industry’s biggest names, including Bunim/Murray Productions, the Duplass Brothers’ DBP Donut and Brad Weston’s Makeready, as well as established film and television writers. The makers also bought ‘Discover’ to India- tailor-made for the growing community of Indian Snapchatters, through partnerships with nearly a dozen media brands. Snapchat has offered local publisher content in India. Discover partners will create made-for-mobile Publisher Stories and TV-like Shows for Snapchat, across multiple genres.
Early this month, while addressing media at Facebook India’s debut ‘Creator day’ edition in the country, the company’s Head of Product for Video Paresh Rajwat said the biggest trend that Indian digital industry has witnesses in consumer behavior, is rapid growth in adoption of video and that video has become one of the biggest drivers of engagement growth on Facebook. Facebook Creator Day reinforced Facebook’s continual commitment to support the publishers and creator community in India, helping them grow and monetize their videos on the platform by introducing ad breaks and Brand Collabs Manager.
Facebook videos VS Snapchat videos
While both platforms imbibe their strengths and specifics, it is their race to attract more number of creators for boosting videos on the platform has become the talk of the town. A study also reveal that Facebook has been losing more of the younger lot to Snapchat due to easily accessible services. Meanwhile, Facebook has been gaining lot more popularity from the elder generation who keep themselves glued to the videos in their feed. Echoing similar views, Neil Athayde, Group Account Manager, Chimp&z Inc believes that both are not really competitive with each other as they cater to different objectives. Like on Snapchat videos are consumed over their discover section, while a similar section to the same on Facebook is Facebook Watch than Facebook Videos.
Throwing light on the demographics for each platform, Prateek N Kumar, CEO & Managing Director, NeoNiche shared that Facebook videos cater to a wide variety of audiences, while Snapchat Videos are youth-oriented as 60 per cent of its audience fall under the age group of 12-24 years. Snapchat videos have quirky decorating tools like emojis, bitmojis (personalized emojis), and stickers, apart from this, Snapchat also provides revenue generating tools like sponsored lenses, geo-filters and spectacles which helps it to monetize at the same time let the user customize the video. While Facebook videos either through FB Live or recorded ones are less customized in terms of visual appeal. Snapchat videos also hook the audience to check the platform frequently as there is a sense of fear of missing out (FOMO) as the videos disappear after 24 hours while FB videos are less addictive from this sense.