If the third-quarter earnings of Google and Snap are anything to go by, short-form video content is starting to stagnate, a report by The Information stated. Snap, the parent company of multimedia instant messaging app Snapchat didn’t give the breakdown of the monthly active users of its short-form video feature Spotlight.
During its second quarter earnings, the company had stated that the feature had amassed more than 400 million monthly active users. Snap had also said that in the September quarter time spent on Spotlight clip had grown by 200% year-on-year. The lack of details offered this time suggests that there wasn’t much to celebrate.
Snapchat had launched the Spotlight feature in November 2020 to compete with TikTok and Instagram reels.
On the other hand, YouTube Shorts hasn’t really expanded its user base of two billion per month since the last quarter.
Both platforms performed stronger than expected due to advertising. Snap posted a revenue at $1.19 billion, a 5% increase from the second-quarter, beating analyst expectations of $1.11 billion, owing to AI-powered ad-targeting tools.
YouTube generated $7.95 billion in ad revenue for the third-quarter, representing a 12.5% year-on-year increase, as compared to analyst projections of $7.81 billion for the quarter. Execs said the growth came both from brand and direct ads. Last year, ad revenue for the platform had dropped by 1.9%.
Published - October 25, 2023 05:22 pm IST
