Owning the youth video market
YouTube is already a credible alternative to TV for some advertisers. But the addition of Snapchat, which reaches 166 million users a day, could give Google a lock on the daily video viewing of younger consumers.
If ad buyers have any complaint about web video compared to TV - it's that for all its faults, TV can still rack up big audiences in short bursts. Need to reach 10 million viewers in one night? Run an ad on "Monday Night Football" or "This is Us" and you're all set.
Snapchat boasts of average daily users sessions of 30 minutes. YouTube users now average 60 minutes a day on its mobile app. Facebook, by contrast, is doing everything it can simply to convince users to spend 3 seconds watching a video in its Newsfeed.
The combination of YouTube - which reaches 1.5 billion users a month - and Snapchat could give Google an unmatchable daily "reach machine"; a direct pathway to youngsters who log their screen time hours in front of phones and tablets. It's easy to imagine a specialized Google ad buy that connects brands with the majority of teens and 20-somethings every day, giving Google a legitimate rival to the reach marketers currently get through TV.
In short, Google could lock up the highly-valued young eyeball market. The combo of Snap and YouTube would be like Google owning both MTV and ESPN circa 1993.