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TikTok stomped Snapchat as hard as the elephant in the room. TikTok takes the top spot from Snapchat for the first time in Piper Sandler’s survey. Not only users who change their minds, but also ad investors. A study by Similar web showed that in the first quarter of this year, TikTok ads traffic increased by about 200 per cent from the same period last year, while Snap declined by nearly nine per cent. Meanwhile, insider intelligence predicts that TikTok’s digital ad revenue will triple this year to nearly $US12 billion, with a market share of 1.9 per cent, more than Twitter and Snap combined. Being shrouded in capital market concerns, Snap’s stock price fell from $US83 to $US9, a proper reverse tenfold. So why did Snap fall first? How did TikTok negatively affect its performance?
The Indian market is hard to replicate. Snap found that the content released in 2021 increased by 200 per cent compared with 2020, covering 70 local Indian channels, involving news, fitness, fashion, entertainment and comedy. Spiegel is quite complacent, ‘We have made significant investments to localise the Snapchat experience for the Indian community. But in fact, the high growth of the Indian market has benefited more from the competitive environment than its own operation. In mid-2020, India’s policy made Chinese mobile apps disappear from the Indian market overnight, including TikTok, which is in the limelight, and a large share of the social field has been vacant. Originally, this should be a great opportunity seized by international social giants such as Facebook and Twitter, but they were also regulated by the Indian government due to factors such as harmful content, lax privacy and network security protection. Snap has avoided the regulatory crisis with the feature of “burning after reading” and has rapidly expanded in the Indian market. And this opportunity cannot be replicated.
Snap’s advertising marketing encounters TikTok and faces new challenges. On May 23, Snap’s sudden earning report caused tremors in the social network markets.Statistics show that Snap’s stock price drops 43 per cent, below the issue price and the entire social media stock market lost $US160 billion in one day. This earning report said the macroeconomic environment has deteriorated further and faster than anticipated. In 2021, the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve after the Covid-19 has stimulated the enthusiasm of the people to buy houses. And this external stimulus benefited not only real estate, but also the advertising industry. As shown in 2014-2021 data, Snap has grown by eight per cent; by contrast, Twitter has grown by three per cent and Facebook by only one per cent. Advertising accounts for about 99 per cent of Snap’s revenue, making Snap an industry barometer for companies that rely on advertising revenue. Based on this, Snap’s earning call is equivalent to a warning from sunny to overcast, which stimulates pessimism in the industry. As of January 2022, TikTok has a thousand million monthly active users while snapchat with only 557 million. TikTok attracted more than US$296 million, ranking first in the global mobile application revenue list.
The deterioration of the environment has exceeded expectations. Spiegel said in a memo to employees: the pace of hiring for unopened roles will slow. The remaining budget for 2022 will also be assessed for additional cost savings. In this way, the advertising business is being pushed to the abyss of the cliff, and the new commercialisation model has not yet formed. It is difficult for the capital market to be optimistic about Snap in a short period of time. Young technology companies that have never experienced such a complex environment are subject to changes in macroeconomic and privacy policies, making the legend of advertising revenue no longer.
