In 2016, Instagram released its “Story” feature. In addition to posting on their feed, users were able to post photos or videos onto their profile that would appear for 60-seconds, then disappear in 24 hours.

Users immediately noticed the similarities to Snapchat. Another social media platform, Snapchat allowed users to send videos or photos with text to individual users, or save them onto your Snapchat feed, making it visible to all your friends on the social medium. These posts were also live for 24 hours, then deleted forever.

Since then, Instagram continued to “copy” some of Snapchat’s other features – face filters, image filters, direct messages to other users.

In a 2017 interview with Wall Street Journal, Former Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom (Systrom sold Instagram to Facebook in 2012) stated Instagram’s latest features are simply a product of competition:

“The first time you see a product show up somewhere else it feels a lot like copying but imagine a world where the only car was the Ford Model T,” Systrom said. “I’m really glad there are a lot of car companies producing different cars. Just because they have wheels and windows and AC doesn’t mean that you’re copying.”

At the time, users quickly adopted Instagram’s Story feature. In May of 2017, Instagram stories was experiencing 200 million daily users (compared to its 600 million daily users) while Snapchat rested at 160 million daily users, according to Fortune.

Today, those numbers look more like 500 million daily users on Instagram stories, according to Tech Crunch. And 173 million daily users on Snapchat, according to Social Report.

Haasini Sai writes on Medium, users choice of Instagram over Snapchat could be for a myriad of reasons: Instagram boasts an all-around better user-experience, Snapchat is becoming overwhelming by adding more and more features, brands are more avoidable on Instagram, following is much easier on Instagram – she could go on.

But CNN states it’s Instagram features that are poaching users. With the ability to add GIFs, music, longer posts on IGTV, Instagram simply has more entertaining features that also keeps users on the app longer.

While more users are on Instagram, and it has more features than Snapchat, deciding with medium to advertise on falls to your demographic. Before recommending any strategy, LEAP Amp does a deep dive of brands – finding out who their target audience is and where they are spending time on the Internet. If it’s Snapchat, a content calendar and live videos are created. If it’s Instagram, content production for boomerangs begin.

We understand marketing budgets are tight and need to be spent on content that resonates with your audience. We can help you choose the medium and execute the content that converts.