• by P.J. Bednarski , Staff Writer @pjbtweet, November 9, 2015

Six billion videos are viewed on Snapchat every day, three times as many as were viewed in May.

That surprising stat was reported over the weekend by the Financial Times, and the paper says, Snapchat confirmed it without further comment.

But even in a business with amazing, mind-boggling stats, that’s one amazing mind-boggling stat.

As a comparison, Facebook reported that eight billion videos are viewed there every day, and that figure is twice what it was in April.

Snapchat’s video volume says a lot of things. For one, it says short, shorter and shortest works with audiences. Even Snapchat Stories--which are long versions of “snaps” and last 24 hours before disappearing-- are still short.

But for advertisers?

On the Discover feature or Live Stories, two places where advertisers can put their messages, various reports say Snapchat counts even a one second flash of advertising as a “view.”  Facebook counts a view after just three seconds. Financial Times, and lots of others, take a dim (brief) view of that benchmark.

But it does have an odd kind of logic. If the “content” is so brief, then how long must an ad last to make an impression?

Well, longer than the blink of the eye, I have a feeling.

The truly stunning thing about Snapchat’s figures is that unlike YouTube or Facebook, all of Snapchat’s views, however brief and insignificant, happen on a smartphone. All six billion of them, from 100 million active users.

No doubt the fact Snapchat’s rolling stock of “content” is so short contributes--massively--to the number of views. Snapchat videos, like Vines, are to online video what a White Castle Slider is to the average sized hamburger. They go down easy.

And there are experts at extremely short. Vine artists can pack a lot into six seconds. Even so, it’s six seconds.

That isn’t a great (or logical, or fruitful) atmosphere for an advertiser. But it’s the way things are headed for a portion of the market. I appreciate how many brands try to use all all advertising modes; I do believe very brief ads--even on mobile phones--don’t accomplish much.

What happens when a short attention span whittles down from “short” to zero? Nothing good, I’d venture.

But the march is on, from television show length content to, as a norm, clips that come and go. It seems hard to believe the phrase “fast-paced” was ever used prior to, oh, say 2008.

Mark Zuckerberg, touting Facebook’s own skyrocketing video showcase, explained last week on an earnings call that the next frontier is for the networks and studios to invent new ways. “to ‘chunk’ their stuff up better, so that way it can be more easily consumed by this big community online." Short is sweet. It’s ridiculously sweet.

pj@mediapost.com