Cheatsheet: Snapchat adds 4M daily users, reaches 75% of 13- to 34-year-olds in US
Snapchat is no longer bleeding users — in fact, it’s adding them. The platform added daily users for the first time in the last three quarters, now totaling 190 million daily active users, the company reported on April 23 in its first-quarter of 2019 earnings release.
The good news comes shortly after Snap’s first-ever partner summit in Los Angeles, where it announced several new efforts to increase engagement in its app. For example, Snap is adding more TV-like content and introduced a new gaming platform with ad-supported games. Snap’s user growth has stayed pretty stagnant in the U.S., but it’s been investing in other markets, and now with the help of an improved Android app.
Here’s what to know.
The key numbers:
- 190 million daily active users (up 4 million from the previous quarter)
- 80 million daily active users in North America (up 1 million from the previous quarter)
- $320 million quarterly revenue (up from $231 million the year prior)
- Average revenue per user is $1.68 (up from $1.21 the year prior)
- Net loss was $310 million (down by $75 million the year prior)
- Reaches 75 percent of 13 to 34-year-olds in the U.S.
- More than 450 premium content channels are now on Discover
What Wall Street wanted:
Wall Street expected $306.6 million in revenue, which Snapchat beat with $320 million. Snap’s stock price shot up about about 12% shortly after the news dropped and then went down to about 6%. Its stock is up by more than 100 percent compared to this time last year.
Android app is finally out and seeing positive results
One big detriment to Snapchat’s user growth was a lack of investment in its Android product. Earlier this month, Snapchat widely released its new version of its Android app. According to its earnings release, the app is 25% smaller and opens 20% faster. Snap said that this new app resulted in a 6% increase in the number of users using the platform within the first week of its release.
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The Android app “is the price of admission to international markets. The next effort is localization,” Spiegel said on the earnings call.
Snapchat Discover has a lot more content
Snapchat Discover has gone from a handful of publishers in 2015 to more than 450 “premium” channels globally. And while not every Snapchat user is actively engaged with that content, Snap shared evidence that its audience is loyal. In the first quarter of 2019, nearly half of daily viewers of Discover watched it every day of the week. Snap has been investing in growing its content offerings overseas, launching 50 new shows and publisher stories this past quarter and doubling the number of local media partners outside of the U.S. over the last six months.
Snap emphasized that its media partners are adding new audiences through its app. In its earnings release, Snap shared that Discover partners increased total mobile monthly audience in the U.S. by more than 30% on average during March, citing Comscore data.
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Snap is making its ads manager easier to use
Snap may never beat Facebook on the sheer number of advertisers using the platform, but it has worked to improve the experience of advertising on Snapchat. This year, Snap has added target cost bidding, bulk uploading and bulk editing to ads platform. And it has more improvements in its platform planned, as revealed in the pitch deck Digiday obtained.
Advertisers also can buy ads and manage their campaigns differently. Snap recently released reach and frequency buying for all advertisers. Beta partners told Digiday the tool was one of their key requests to help them plan and buy in advance.
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