Snapchat CEO Wants To Make It Easier For “Brands To Be Brands,” May Offer Self-Serve Ads
In an interview at the Code Conference, Evan Spiegel says Snapchat has nearly 100 million daily active users.
Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel is no fan of brands. At least not on Snapchat. He gets frustrated when he sees businesses pretending to be human on the popular messaging app. He doesn’t follow them.
“Philosophically, it is important that Snapchat is [a platform] built for people and not for brands,” said Spiegel, during an interview Tuesday on stage at the Code Conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif.
That’s not much of a welcome mat, or place-setting at the table, for brands who have been using Snapchat — or considering using it — to reach out to Snapchat’s large and young audience. As our Danny Sullivan noted:
Up to now, Snapchat’s outreach to businesses has mostly been to pitch them to buy expensive ad units within its Stories and Discovery features, campaigns said to have cost up to $750,000 a day before the company slashed rates recently.
As Spiegel’s remarks Tuesday indicated, helping brands with their organic use of the platform hasn’t been a priority, but he said that eventually the company will add a self-service ad platform to help marketers do what marketers do.
“We will make it easier for brands to be brands,” Spiegel said, “and self-serve advertising is part of that.”
Snapchat Now Has Nearly 100 Million Daily Active Users
Unlike Facebook and Twitter, privately held Snapchat isn’t required to share metrics about how many people use its network and has kept a fairly tight rein on those metics. There hasn’t been a solid number reported since the Wall Street Journal put Snapchat MAUs at 100 million last August.
On stage Tuesday, Spiegel upped the ante. He said Snapchat has nearly 100 million daily active users in “developed markets” and that 65% of those users create content daily. For comparison’s sake, Facebook reported 936 million daily active users in its most recent earnings report.
In another sign of how engaged Snapchat’s audience is, Spiegel said internally the company tracks “hourly active users.” He didn’t report that metric, however.
For full coverage of Spiegel’s appearance see Re/Code’s live blog.
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