Ephemeral content has been around for a while now, but it still seems we have barely scratched the surface of the market potential. While the market seems to have cooled in terms of Snapchat’s waning market capitalisation, as well as Instagram’s founders leaving Facebook looking for greener pastures, the ephemeral content war wages on.

The question remains, who will win in the end? Though Snapchat seems to have its back against the wall, it appears that neither of the two in the space has monopolised the market. Here are my thoughts on the subject:

While Instagram Stories may have 400 million daily active users, compared to Snapchat’s measly 180 million daily active users, ephemeral content cannot be valued on daily active users alone. While Instagram is a clear front-runner in terms of the users and audience, snapchat premium has been able to build a clearer path to monetisation from its user base.

Premium snapchats are usually reserved for influencers with bottom-less supply of bottom-ful content (that’s my joke for the day). On the other hand, Instagram has clearly built in the idea of sponsored content being the future.

It’s often been said that the era of the influencer is coming to an end. That might be true for brands, but it sure isn’t the case when it comes to people. In the future, at an individual level, influencers will no longer broadcast themselves using products to a loyal following. Instead, it is becoming increasingly likely that people will subscribe to the idea of “lifestyle influencing”, whereby instead of travel shows, people will pay for premium content to influence them in their lifestyle decisions.

While Instagram stories might have won the day, it surely hasn’t won the war.

While it probably isn’t going to be the next ground breaking feature, Snapcash, or Snapchats own payments system for its premium content is flying under the radar of many in the digital marketing space.

Imagine for a moment that a celebrity could earn a percentage of all the money earned by a franchise that it promotes. All that franchise would have to do is promote the geotag attributable to that celebrity for purchasing at a given location.

This is one of the many use cases for Snapcash. Though Snapchat is not famous for its execution, it’s definitely known for being forward thinking. Were Instagram to step into the space, we may see a very different landscape in Ephemeral marketing.

Though Snapchat hasn’t won the war, it has a long way to go before it can win any battles. With Instagram being clearly complacent with its market position, who knows where Ephemeral content will end up.