Dive Brief:

• Snapchat and its more than 100 million users claimed seven billion mobile video views per day, rivaling Facebook’s eight billion daily views from its 1.55 billion users.
• The high number of views comes from Snapchat’s "Stories" feature, according to sources who spoke with Bloomberg.
• Snapchat’s video views are up from six billion just two months ago.

Dive Insight:

Snapchat is proving to be a video-serving juggernaut, close to reaching Facebook video view numbers with around fifteen times fewer users. And, in a way are more valuable than Facebook’s numbers since users have to click on a video to view it, while Facebook counts autoplay videos as viewed.

All those views should help the social media platform gain advertising revenue via its Discover platform. According to eMarketer, U.S. video ad sales in 2015 were $7.46 billion.

Joe Liebman, global strategy director at Tribal Worldwide, told Digiday, "For all but the most bold clients, Snapchat is still lumped into alternative platforms, even though the usage proves that it is anything but."

For its part, Snapchat is building an API for its advertising partners that is expected to be ready for testing this spring.  An agency executive with knowledge of Snapchat’s API plans told Digiday, "Snapchat’s ambition going into 2016 is to have many more opportunities for e-commerce on the platform and other stuff that is more about building audiences."