Joining Facebook and Twitter, Snapchat will soon features ads on its social media platform. Ads will become the first source of revenue for the $10 billion company.
"People are going to see the first ads on Snapchat soon," co-founder and CEO of Snapchat Evan Spiegel said at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit in San Francisco.
Snapchat, the mobile app that allows users to share photos and videos that disappear, will run the ads on Stories and Our Stories, one of the app's most popular features.
Last year, the three-year-old Los Angeles-based company released Stories, the feature that allows users to share photos and videos that stay live for 24 hours. Stories, which provide an intimate peak at a user's life, is commonly used by social media superstars to reach thousands of fans in minutes.
"We're cutting through a lot of the new technology stuff around ads to sort of the core of it, which I think has always been telling a story that leaves people with a new feeling," Spiegel said.
Some Snapchat superstars like Frenchman Jerome Jarre have previously been compensated big bucks for appearing in movie premiere advertisements and events. Brands will soon be able to cash in on the face-paced social sharing app through the new ad policy.
It appears Snapchat is focusing on its video feature. Ads will lead the company one step closer to becoming what Jarred called "YouTube on mobile."
Snapchat users will not see the ads on their personal messages and may choose to skip the ads. "They're not fancy. You just look at it if you want to look at it, and you don't if you don't," Spiegel said.
Snapchat's new ad feature will not allow advertisers to target specific users the way companies like Facebook do by collecting user information, a policy that has users worried about their privacy. Facebook unsuccessfully attempted to buy Snapchat last year for $3 billion.
"Brands are going to have to figure out how to get super creative," said Shafqat Islam, CEO of content marketing software company NewsCred. "Just think about these agencies -- they're used to creating either 30-second spots that cost millions of dollars, or display ads. Now they're going to have to make snaps."
The app may be the next big market for advertising, as a reported 700 million users send self-destructing snaps. Over 500 million "stories" are viewed on Snapchat each day.
It is still unknown when the ads will debut.
