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As we’ve seen over the years, social networking apps all struggle to find ways to monetize and sustain their businesses. Eventually, all of them succumb to the power of advertising. Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram all figured that out.
And now Snapchat is doing the same. Alongside their publisher content program, Snapchat’s latest move to monetize their self-destructive messaging service is to inject ads into it.
Snapchat’s ad platform will allow third-party companies to self-publish ads in Snapchat. The ads will show up as short video “stories” as you go through each of the “stories” coming in from your friends and brands you follow. Thankfully, you’ll be able to skip these ads just as you would any story, so it doesn’t sound all bad.
Snapchat is poised to make as much $1 billion on their new business by the end of 2017 if all goes well. Once the company starts rolling in the dough, they’ll likely be looking toward an IPO to turn them into a serious player in the social arena.
Of course, this all depends on whether users value Snapchat enough to stay around for the ads. Instagram, Twitter and Facebook all offered unique experiences which users were happy to put up with ads for. Can the same be said for Snapchat? That remains to be seen. In the meantime, Snapchat is still Snapchat, but you can expect to see ads come up in your feed within a few weeks’ time.
[via TheNextWeb]
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