Snapchat, the short-form communications platform that’s everyone’s favourite for consequence-free time-wasting, has angered its userbase by introducing adverts in between snaps. You know, those adverts the company said they were going to introduce months ago.
If this all seems like a storm in a teacup, remember that Snapchat’s userbase is basically made up of sickeningly young people with the attention span of a goldfish but a sense of entitlement that would rival the Royal Family. How dare Snapchat try to make money from the service it provides them with for free? How dare they?!?!
Once the life-ending, soul-destroying horror of Snapchat’s monetisation efforts has passed (in roughly five minutes), it’s worth noting that the company has put some thought and effort into how it’s looking to advertise. Full screen interstitial ads will appear in between snaps, and these ads can be swiped up to engage in a longer-form content piece. It is slick, familiar, and well thought out. However, given that adverts can appear for up to 10 seconds Snapchat may be guilty of allowing too long a form of advertising onto a platform that is dedicated to the short form factor.
The oddity here is that – up until this move – Snapchat had looked to be building a platform based on cosmetic sales. No, not make-up, but individual geo-filters that users could buy to add their own personal touch to whatever young, trendy thing it was they were snapping. The app also offers Lenses as a form of interactive advertising. For example, they did a ‘war paint’ Lens for the Superbowl that got used 65m times.
Certainly the company is working the monetization angle hard, but only time will tell if they can carry their previous track record of well integrated revenue streams within the app into actual, blatant adverts. As one of only two apps that are actually growing year-on-year, too crass an effort runs the risk of killing the goose that lays the golden egg. Then again, if they can’t attempt to lay the odd golden egg in the first place, what’s the point?
If you are a horrified Snapchat user then you can go here to investigate the full unfolding nightmare of adverts on your platform.