Ads Coming To Snapchat

Advertisements are on their way to Snapchat. Evan Spiegel, company’s founder and CEO told Bloomberg on October 7th that non-targeted ads will “soon” debut on Snapchat. This announcement comes after investors valued the company at $10 billion dollars in late August. The decision to begin advertisements will be the company’s first revenue stream. Spiegel said, “We’re cutting through a lot of the new technology stuff around ads to sort of the core of it, which I think has always been telling a story that leaves people with a new feeling.” The 24-year old entrepreneur seems determined to prevent the ads from taking away from the Snapchat experience. Spiegel also said he wants to keep it simple. “They’re not fancy. You just look at it if you want to look at it, and you don’t if you don’t,” Spiegel added.

Snapchat is a disappearing photo or video platform. It’s become very popular, with reports indicating the 100 million users send around 400 million “snaps” daily. That beats out the photo sharing of both Facebook and Instagram. Packing a large and very active user base Snapchat could prove very popular for advertisers. Billy Gallagher of Tech Crunch broke down the ad possibilities for Snapchat in May of 2013. “With a very captive audience, Snapchat could have very profitable ads,” Gallagher said. “Imagine a picture snap once a day or every 10 snaps where you have to hold the image and view the ad for five seconds before using the app more. Or an advertising video snap that played on its own for 10 seconds, instead of you holding it down to view.”

That declaration by Gallagher was before Snapchat launched a “story” feature in October of 2013. The story feature allows users to present a string of their snaps that’s viewable for 24 hours. Advertisers can certainly take advantage of that feature and have an “ad story,” however Snapchat may develop snap placement programs that are only available to advertisers. It’s all hearsay at this point, however, Snapchat is in an excellent position to raise a lot of revenue and provide dealers with an excellent advertisement option. What is it dealers can do with Snapchat? Could your store create a car deal “story” of the day? Would your dealership use it to post a short promotional video? What do you think dealerships can do with Snapchat right now and what would you like to do with Snapchat ads in the future?