Skip to main content

Snapchat boss wants his messaging app to make money without being ‘creepy’

With nearly 100 million active users and an IPO on the horizon, Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel must surely be feeling as confident as ever that the startup he co-founded four years ago is going places.

Speaking on stage at an international ad festival in Cannes this week, the man behind the ephemeral messaging app covered a wide range of subjects, though he was there primarily to highlight the app’s ad platform.

Recommended Videos

Addressing the audience, he said the Snapchat team “really care about not being creepy” when it comes to incorporating ad features geared toward monetizing the cross-platform mobile app.

Intent on convincing top marketing executives at the event that advertising on Snapchat would be money well spent, Spiegel focused on differences between his own app and other social media offerings, Business Insider reported.

For example, the CEO is clearly happy with the app’s vertical video ads, feeling no pressure or necessity to switch to horizontal videos as seen on many other mobile offerings. In addition, his team set up the video ads to slot into curated Live Stories – montages of images and videos submitted by Snapchat users from a single high-profile event such as a festival – rather than have them kick in before the main content. “Pre-rolls are really annoying because it gets in the way of the content you want to watch,” Spiegel says.

Also, Snapchat’s video ads are geared more toward context than targeting, meaning they’ll fit closely with the content of a Live Story. According to Spiegel, it’s this focus on context-based video advertising, rather than targeting with the help of user data, that should help Snapchat avoid creeping out its user base.

The 25-year-old CEO made similar points in a new video (below) launched Monday. Displaying production values marginally better than those exhibited in the curious effort he posted last week, Spiegel talks about Snapchat’s 3V – vertical video views – approach to ads.

“Vertical because it’s made for mobile, video because that’s the best way to tell a story, and views because they’re always full screen,” Spiegel says.

Introducing 3V Advertising

Clearly still enjoying his role leading the startup, Spiegel told the Cannes audience that at Snapchat “we do stuff that’s kind of hippy,” explaining how each week workers gather in groups of 10 to “talk about how we feel about things.”

“The point is to emphasize the importance of listening,” he said, adding, “I don’t think we pay attention enough to just listening to people and how they feel. I know sometimes I’m so focused on what I’m going to say next, that I’m not listening to what they’re saying….I’m trying to get better.”

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
How to deactivate your Instagram account (or delete it)
A person holding a phone with the Instagram app open on it.

Oh, social media. Sometimes it’s just too much, folks.

If you’re finding yourself in a position where shutting down your Instagram account for a period of time sounds good, the people at Meta have made it pretty simple to deactivate it. It’s also quite easy to completely delete your Instagram, although we wouldn’t recommend this latter option if you plan on returning to the platform at a later date.

Read more
Bluesky finally adds a feature many had been waiting for
A blue sky with clouds.

Bluesky has been making a lot of progress in recent months by simplifying the process to sign up while at the same time rolling out a steady stream of new features.

As part of those continuing efforts, the social media app has just announced that users can now send direct messages (DMs).

Read more
Reddit just achieved something for the first time in its 20-year history
The Reddit logo.

Reddit’s on a roll. The social media platform has just turned a profit for the first time in its 20-year history, and now boasts a record 97.2 million daily active users, marking a year-over-year increase of 47%. A few times during the quarter, the figure topped 100 million, which Reddit CEO and co-founder Steve Huffman said in a letter to shareholders had been a “long-standing milestone” for the site.

The company, which went public in March, announced the news in its third-quarter earnings results on Tuesday.

Read more