Facebook and Messenger Stories now claim a combined 300 million daily active users | Industry
Facebook announced today at a press event in New York City that Stories now has 300 million daily active users across Messenger and Facebook. The company also shed additional light on how it seeks to draw more users and advertisers into Stories.
Across Facebook’s family of apps, Instagram Stories still has the most daily active users, though it has also been around longer. In June, Facebook announced that Instagram now had 400 million daily active users. It’s also been difficult to track the growth of Facebook Stories.
Facebook initially broke out the number of users sharing in Stories in both the main app and Messenger — since when a user now posts a story on Messenger, that story is automatically shared on Facebook Stories as well. In May, the company said Facebook Stories alone had 150 million daily active users.
At the event, Facebook also announced that starting today all advertisers globally will be able to run ads in Stories (Facebook first started testing Facebook Stories ads in May). The company will also start rolling out ads on Messenger Stories in the coming weeks.
One of the challenges that Facebook faces in selling Stories ads is that the photos and videos used for these ads need to be displayed vertically, while most creative for ads campaigns is shot horizontally. In order to make it easier for advertisers to use Stories, Facebook lets them upload horizontal content, which it then converts into a full-screen format fit for Stories.
Facebook execs, including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have said they believe sharing in Stories will overtake sharing in Feeds over the coming years as users naturally want to share more organic moments from their lives.
“It’s all about keeping up with friends and family day-to-day,” Liz Keneski, a researcher for Facebook Stories, said at the event.
However, Facebook is also taking measures to ensure that happens — across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, Stories are prominently displayed at the top of the feed, increasing the likelihood that users will see and click on them.