I attended the Internet Retailer Conference in Chicago on June 9-11 and it was very interesting to see that the focus has shifted to “images” and “photos”. This visual content is now clearly driving content engagement and there were excellent case studies how The North Face and Z Gallerie are integrating user generated photos and video to help convert e-commerce sales.

Firstly, the below screenshot of a presentation shows that almost half (46.8%) of all Snapchat users are 18 to 24 years of age. SO, the big news is that Snapchat has more almost 30% of users aged 25 to 34 years of age. Not so young are they. I know this as Snapchat is highly addictive for parents because it’s fun and fast to take a selfie or video and use those way cool geo codes to show where you are.

Secondly, Snapchat users are more likely across lots of genres of content to post videos as opposed to just take photos. As we know from YouTube, video is a killer application.

Overall, Internet Retailer in Chicago in 2016 was about images, photos and video on social networks and how all retailers are supplementing product images with user generated content photos and videos.