Social Rocket
Snapchat wants to expand its advertising business significantly faster. In a letter marking the company's 15 year anniversary, CEO Evan Spiegel explains that growth in advertising revenue after safety is Snap's most important business priority. Creator Ads, generative AI and more shopping features are meant to play central roles.
The pressure behind this is understandable: for the second quarter, Snap reported 2026 1,599 billion US dollars in total revenue, 19 percent more than a year earlier. However, Spiegel puts advertising revenue growth in the most recent quarter at just 9 percent. At the same time, Snapchat reaches 971 million monthly and 493 million daily active users, according to the company.
Small and medium-sized businesses are becoming more important
According to Spiegel, more than 30 percent of advertising revenue now comes from small and medium-sized businesses. Snap therefore wants to simplify access to the platform further and automate the performance of its ads more.
The recent expansion of measurement infrastructure fits this: Snapchat has just rolled out Unified Attribution worldwide for app advertisers, so that signals from AppsFlyer and Adjust can flow more directly into reporting and campaign optimisation.
Snap is thinking about "generative advertising"
Spiegel also describes a much broader AI vision. Snapchat is meant to understand multimodal signals better in order to infer user interests and purchase intent and suggest suitable companies or products. He calls this approach "generative advertising".
Importantly, this is currently mainly a strategic target description and not a fully rolled-out new ad format. Snap wants to detach ad logic over the long term from the individual ad inventory available and instead start from the user's need.
The direction resembles the broader trend towards AI-driven delivery and automation that is also visible on other platforms. At Meta, for example, AI creatives and automated attribution are growing at the same time.
Creator Ads are meant to bring more attention
Creators are the second major lever. According to Snap, more than 300.000 creators are now qualified to work with brands on the platform. In a study cited by Snap, Creator Ads ran on average 25 percent longer and generated 16 percent more active attention than comparable standard branding ads.
These figures are company claims and not a universal benchmark. They do, however, match a development we also see outside Snapchat: brands are increasingly separating creator production from classic influencer reach buying. Our article on Ghost Creators and "Creator as a Service" shows why this market is currently becoming more professional and more performance-oriented.
By the end of 2027, Snapchat is meant to become a stronger sales channel
Spiegel sets a concrete goal: by the end of 2027, businesses should see Snapchat not only as an advertising platform but more as a sales channel. Products are meant to become easier to find and share; relevant organic product content could also be distributed more widely.
Spotlight is on the agenda as well. Snap wants to improve monetisation of the short-video feed and close the revenue gap compared with Stories. For brands, this means Snapchat is working simultaneously on discovery, creator inventory, measurement and commerce, which is far more than just additional ad formats.
That creator efficiency is being questioned more closely is also shown by our analysis of prices and measurement problems in creator marketing.
What marketers should take away
In the short term, Spiegel's letter does not automatically change campaign setups. The most important statements are strategic priorities, and not all of them are yet available as products. What matters, however, is the direction: Snap wants to convert its large young user base more effectively into measurable demand and connect creators, AI and shopping more closely.
For media teams, it is therefore worth above all separating concrete product rollouts from the long-term vision, and measuring new Snapchat features against real sales and incrementality KPIs rather than just reach or views.