Snapchat advertising spend by national marketers was projected to have increased by 10% in Q3 and by 8% through the first 9 months of the year, according to recent figures from Standard Media Index, which sources its data directly from the invoices of 5 of the 7 major media holding companies and leading independent agencies.
Snapchat’s advertising business has been growing slower than expected. Well, at least according to eMarketer, which recently drastically cut its forecast for the platform’s ad revenues.
This year Snapchat is now expected to generate $662.1 million in net US ad revenues, a ~36% decrease from the $1.03 billion forecast in March. The reason given is a greater portion of Snapchat’s advertising being transacted programmatically, with a rebound in advertising revenue growth projected for next year and 2020 due to a greater volume of advertisers.
In a survey conducted among social media marketers earlier this year, only 19% were planning to advertise on Snapchat in the following year, and just 12% planned to increase their spending on Snapchat ads. That compared with 88% planning to advertise on Facebook and two-thirds expecting to advertise on Instagram.
For its part, eMarketer notes that Snapchat occupies just 0.6% of the US digital advertising market, versus the 57.7% commanded by Google and Facebook combined. Snapchat has a slightly higher share of the mobile ad market, logically, but remains below 1% (0.9%).
Nonetheless, it’s instructive to see where advertisers are putting their money when it comes to Snapchat ads. According to Standard Media Index, two-thirds of Snapchat’s ad revenue from national advertisers in the third quarter came from SnapAds. Lenses (14%) were the next-most popular type in terms of ad revenue, followed by Rotational Ads (9%), Geofilter (5%), and Discover (3%). SnapCodes and Snapisodes each accounted for 1% of the revenue derived from national advertisers during the quarter.
