Snapchat: the first ad

Yesterday, October 19th Snapchat ran its first proper advertisement. The manner in which it did, the format, and the choice of content are worth commenting on: after all, we’re talking here about one of the most interesting startups in recent times, one that has been most involved in redefining an entire generation’s ideas of what constitutes privacy and that is now about to clarify its business model.

The first thing to take into consideration is the way that Snapchat informed its users of the move. This was done via a simple entry in its corporate blog, written in the usual friendly and informal tone avoiding corporate language, and with a straightforward headline followed by a description of what the company was planning to do, along with a series of conditions:

• We’re not going to collect data about you or how you use the application.
• All that will happen is that an advertisement among your recent updates that you can decide to look at or not
• The ad will disappear either after you have looked at it, as with any other update, or after 24 hours
• If you don’t want to look at it: no problem at all, no offense taken
• Oh, and we will never include advertisements within your personal communication, that’s to say your snaps or chats, because that would be inappropriate.

Pretty much like “losing the innocence”, but with style… The company says the idea is to offer users a “fun” and “informative”, the way advertisements used to be, “before they got creepy and targeted”. In other words, very much not what Google or Facebook do, and reflecting the Apple’s philosophy stated in the latest Tim Cook’s letter on privacy: we’re not about spying on our users, we simply sell them products, or in this case, we put advertisements in front of them, but on a generic basis, without spying on their tastes or preferences. Once again, the idea running underneath this is that collecting information on users to feed them segmented advertising is intrinsically bad, which is something that seems to resonate with a generation that seemed to dismiss the idea of privacy, but that now seems to be redefining it. Give me a few more examples along the lines of Snapchat, and I’ll start considering Apple’s redefinition strategy pretty successful.

This is advertising, but restricted to advertisements that the user “wants to see” along the lines of “all advertising must be good advertising” either because it is “cool” or informative. A single format, one that users are accustomed to handling, that behaves like the rest of the application, and is explained honestly and openly in terms of “we need to make money”.

Finally, the choice of advertisement: the first trailer for horror movie Ouija (the idea being that rather than frightening its users by collecting information about them, it’s going to frighten them the old-fashioned way, with a horror movie :-) This is a product that seems to make a lot of sense for Snapchat’s demographics, and is a very good way to measure the impact of the spot; the fact that it is the first advertisement on the app will also give it added relevance. It would be good to know how much the producers of Ouija paid for the spot, along with the parameters of that price (on the basis of messages being opened, whether people look at the video, or simply a fixed global price), and the estimated impact on the box office.

As a first attempt at advertising, it’s worth further study, as was Instagram’s about a year ago. Instagram, owned by Facebook, doesn’t appear to have had problems with the advertising format, which seems well established by now, and has not received complaints, but has yet to publish how profitable or effective it was. While young people are turning away from Facebook, Instagram is on the way up: everything would seem to indicate that by trying buy Snapchat, Facebook was trying to buy more of the apps behind its own downfall, integrate them, make them profitable, and gain a better understanding of how young people spend their money. It will be interesting to see how it develops.

(En español, aquí)