Snapchat's daily mobile video views said to rival Facebook's

[SAN FRANCISCO] Snapchat Inc is turning into a mobile-video juggernaut. The social-media company delivers more than 7 billion video clips each day, people with knowledge of the matter said. That rivals the amount watched on Facebook Inc, which has 15 times as many users.

The startup, which has more than 100 million users for its application for sharing disappearing photos and videos, is gaining on its much larger competitor.

Facebook, which has 1.55 billion users, had more than 8 billion daily video views in the third quarter on both desktops and mobile devices. Snapchat also competes with YouTube in mobile video.

Snapchat's video traffic was fueled by Stories, an app feature that lets people share clips of their lives that are viewable for 24 hours, according to one of the people, who asked not be identified because the information isn't public. There's a key different between Snapchat and Facebook video tallies, however: Snapchat users have to click on a video to watch it, while Facebook autoplays clips in its news feed.

Shannon Kelly, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles-based Snapchat, declined to comment.

A stronghold in mobile video is good news for Snapchat's advertising dollars. EMarketer estimates that advertisers spent US$7.46 billion on digital video ads in the US in 2015, up 42 per cent.

Snapchat's business model depends in part on large advertisers creating video content for its news section called Discover, where CNN, Cosmopolitan, ESPN and others have their own channels.

The company, run by Chief Executive Officer Evan Spiegel, was valued at US$16 billion in a fundraising round last year.

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