While many millennials are hanging out on Snapchat, they could care less about the ads, according to a survey 3,000 adults conducted by Fluent LLC, a New York City-based marketing firm.
What ’s more, millennials, say Snapchat is just a fad, and they expect to eventually outgrow it.
While Snapchat’s main selling point to marketers is that it reaches the coveted millennial audience, 69% of all users said they skip the Snapchat ads always or often, according to the Fluent LLC survey. Moreover, 80% of 18 to 24 year-olds said they always or often ignore the ads.
The Fluent survey also found that 48% described Snapchat as just a fad, but 52% said the popular app is here to stay. And a majority of Snapchat’s younger users don’t believe they will be using the app after they turn 35.
Jordan Cohen, chief marketing officer for Fluent, also found it troubling that Snapchat apparently does not operate its own big data system that can provide deeper insights about consumers who use Snapchat’s app.
“They are entirely reliant on third party data in order to target their ads, as compared to say Facebook or Google, who also ingest third party data to optimize ad targeting, but as a complement to the unique and powerful data they are amassing every day, at a massive scale,” Cohen wrote in a blog post.
Cohen also said the survey revealed consumers also seem to prefer the Instagram Stories feature over Snapchat’s Stories feature.
“This might be the most damning of all these findings for the (Snapchat) service,” he wrote. “Facebook/Instagram is starting to beat them at their own game and has not just the financial might, but also even — more importantly — the consumer marketing data to really beat the daylights out of Snap.”
