Even though Instagram has been ahead of Snapchat in terms of growth, but Snapchat is still trying to take a leap forward with the help of their innovation with AR tools & visual tools. This was particularly visible during June when Snapchat released the baby and the gender swap lenses.
Because of these lenses, people continue to download Snapchat which has allowed the platform to stay ahead of its competition Instagram in this field. If Snapchat plans on keeping ahead of other platforms then they should keep innovating new lenses like they already have been doing.
Snapchat announced recently that it will pay out more than $750k to its top augmented reality stars in 2020, 3x what it paid out to creators in 2019. That’s a pretty big commitment, especially if you think about Snapchat’s revenue by the end of next year with ads will be about $2.1 billion. Even Snapchat knows that it won’t be able to compete with Facebook or Instagram when it comes to audience factor, which is why they’ll need to keep on adding more innovative content into their platform to stay ahead.