There was a time when social media networks are unique. As time passed, everyone seems to copy everyone else.
One of the most obvious and famous, is Instagram in copying Snapchat's Stories feature. Making the feature as if it owns it in the first place, Instagram has boosted its popularity rapidly. Messenger also has it, and even WhatsApp also with 'Status', while these two remain a little quiet about it.
Given that Instagram Stories has more than 400 million users, and WhatsApp 'Status' is up to 450 million, the two of Facebook's property is benefiting from the copycat method.
And Facebook here is a bit envious. It convinced itself that Stories is the format of the future.
This started during the company's 2018 F8 developer conference, when several of Facebook executives, including founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, noted that the Stories format is on track to become the most popular feature, to even surpass the News Feed feature as the most popular social sharing option.
But as the largest social media network on the web, Facebook is already feature-packed with numerous features that not everyone uses. And as for Facebook Stories, the social media giant only has around 150 million daily actives.
What this means, Facebook's Stories feature is lagging far behind Instagram and WhatsApp.
The slow rate of growth isn't dampening its enthusiasm for the potential. So here, Facebook wants to catch up by making its Stories a potential format for businesses.
In the post, Facebook outlines the potential of Stories for brands, and their ability to help businesses and brands connect with their audiences.
The company noted that a third of the most viewed Stories on Instagram are from businesses. So here, Facebook suggest how Stories can be the potential format for for brands
"Businesses are already seeing results using ads in Instagram Stories. For example, Tropicana ran video ads in Instagram Stories for its summertime product promotion campaign, achieving an 18-point lift in ad recall and 15-point lift in purchase intent among males. OpenTable used ads in Instagram Stories to drive online restaurant reservations, resulting in a 33% lower cost per reservation compared to other ad formats. And Overstock ran video ads in Instagram Stories to acquire new customers and increase sales, and generated an 18% higher return on ad spend and a 20% decrease in cost per acquisition."
And since the Stories formats are similar on all of Facebook's platform, marketers can easily re-purpose their creative assets to share in Stories across other Facebook's platforms.
Read: Facebook, Instagram Vs. Snapchat: Copying To Eliminate The Threats
