Snapchat Study Highlights Growing Preference for Mobile Video Over TV

Snapchat recently released new insights, in partnership with market researchers Dentsu and Kantar, on how its audience consumes video content, revealing a strong shift towards mobile viewing. The study, focused on Snapchat users in eight markets, shows that 67% of respondents watch videos on mobile daily, while only 50% watch on TV.

According to the study, people tend to pay more attention to videos on their smartphones, with 69% of mobile viewers giving full attention to content compared to 50% of TV viewers. This suggests that mobile screens, even with background distractions, may offer more attentive audiences for advertisers – while also being a stronger way of capturing audiences for longer and making them more likely to stay focused on the content they’re being served.

As mobile viewing becomes more dominant, Snapchat’s study suggests marketers should prioritize mobile video ads as an essential part of their campaigns. The full study dives deeper into the habits of typical Snapchat users – the high percentages that consume social video media daily, the way that their brains “zone in” on smaller screens due to the increased cognitive effort it requires to pay attention, and even the concept of dual-screen exposure for marketing.

While it’s always been known that mobile video advertising is worthwhile, this study is still a useful look into the specifics of how Snapchat’s target markets behave when served video content, and how new content can be better tweaked to increase the chances of them fixating on what they’re seeing on their screen.