Snapchat says 6B videos viewed daily on its app, tripling in past five months

Ephemeral messaging app Snapchat isn’t messing around when it comes to videos, and brands are paying attention. The company has reported that 6 billion videos are viewed on its service each day, triple the number in May. If you simply compare the numbers (and don’t consider how each service measures a “view”), Snapchat is just 2 billion daily videos viewed shy of Facebook’s 8 billion, which was announced last week.

As first reported by The Financial Times, what makes Snapchat’s video views particularly interesting is the fact that they’re all via mobile devices — there is no desktop component available. What’s more, with somewhere over 100 million monthly active users, getting to 6 billion daily video views is certainly notable.

A spokesperson for Snapchat confirmed the 6 billion figure, but declined to comment further.

Snapchat’s video view numbers were not broken up by segments, meaning it’s not currently possible to know whether the views are coming mostly from user-generated videos, from viewers watching the service’s live events (e.g. sporting events, college move-in day, ‘Literally Can’t Even‘, etc. a la Twitter Moments) or through its Discover offering.

Hitting the 6 billion mark is evidence of Snapchat’s continued growth. It’s said that in May daily views were around 3 billion, but by September, Snapchat had hit 4 billion daily video views. So could we expect Snapchat to be on par with Facebook by the end of 2015?

As mentioned earlier, it’s difficult to compare Facebook’s, Snapchat’s, and even YouTube’s daily video views, as the definition of a “view” is different across all services. However, Snapchat is making itself an appealing target to advertisers interested in bringing their TV budgets to engaging mobile platforms. It is also catching the eye of brands and studios who are exploring the potential of original digital content that will resonate with the Snapchat audience.