Users are now watching 7 billion video clips on Snapchat daily, which makes the ephemeral messaging service a contender for being the king of video, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The reported figure marks a massive increase compared to the number of videos watched on the platform from two months ago, and intensifies the competition with rival online video provider Facebook.
In comparison, daily video views on Snapchat were reported to be at about 2 billion in May 2015. In November 2015, the figure was said to have increased to 6 billion video views per day.
The significant jump in Snapchat's video views could partly be attributed to the five-year-old service's release of its new feature Snapchat Stories, which allows users to share short video clips that other users can watch until 24 hours after being uploaded.
The milestone of 7 billion daily video views on Snapchat, which was first reported by Bloomberg, draws the service close to the performance of Facebook, which reported 8 billion videos being watched on the social network daily in November 2015. Facebook, however, is more than 15 times larger compared to Snapchat, with Facebook's 1.55 billion daily users compared to Snapchat's 100 million daily users.
There is no notable difference between the video tallies of Snapchat and Facebook. However, Snapchat users are required to click on videos to watch them and therefore count as a view. On the other hand, Facebook has video clips automatically being played in their news feed, with three seconds of the video being played already counting as a view by the social network's standards.
Internet companies such as Snapchat, Facebook and Google's video sharing website YouTube, are in a race to further increase the size of their video viewing audience. This is because the companies are looking to become the top choice for digital entertainment, along with the lucrative amounts of advertising money that goes along with the position.
According to EMarketer, advertisers shelled out $7.46 billion for digital video advertisements in the United States last year, which was an increase of 42 percent compared to the amount spent in 2014.
For Snapchat, such an increase in daily video views would unsurprisingly be good news. The business model of the messaging service is significantly hinged on advertisers developing video content for Snapchat's Discover, which is a news section that already has ESPN, CNN and Cosmopolitan with their own channels.
Digital advertising will be the focus of Snapchat moving forward, with the company shutting down its Lens Store after only two months in operation.
Lenses are animations that users can apply to their selfies for various special effects, such as having the users puke rainbows and wear mustaches. Snapchat offered a rotating list of free Lenses daily, but with the Lens Store, users could purchase their favorite Lenses for $0.99 each to have it always available on Snapchat.
The company, however, will continue to sell Sponsored Lenses to companies, which offer branding options for corporate sponsors and can be accessed by users for a limited time only.
