Snapads: The future of Snapchat

On Valentines Day I opened Snapchat and saw I had "pending snap" from an unknown source. I didn't recognize the username, and I had to accept the request to view the snap. Curiosity won (who knows, maybe it was a secret admirer?), but it was just an advertisement. "A special gift just for you!" it said, with a picture of a little blue Tiffany's box.

It may not have been the snap I was hoping for, but it shows the potential Snapchat has to make money in advertising. Snaps are brief- only a matter of seconds- and you can stop viewing them instantly, so there isn't much to lose by opening one. Plus there's the whole element of excitement because you never know what you're going to get. That logic applies to our friends, so why wouldn't it apply to brands?

Snapchat doesn't have a revenue model yet, but research indicates native advertising could really work. A study by Sumpto revealed that 45 percent of college kids would open a snap from a brand they didn’t know, and 73 percent would open a snap from a brand they did know. When I found that pending snap, I was too curious to leave it sitting there even though it was from a source I didn't recognize. I almost certainly would've opened it if it was from a brand I liked. And Snapchat has access to enough of our personal information to segment and target users for specific brands. Imagine waking up in the morning to a snap from Starbucks of a steaming mocha. Effective, much?

Brands could even take it a step further and offer coupon deals, redeemable by screenshotting the snap and presenting it at a local store or restaurant. The built-in time limit on snaps would make this advertising kind of exciting, like a race to claim an offer.

Snapads could become a normal part of the experience before we know it. The trick for Snapchat will be targeting ads to make them more relevant (and less annoying) to users, and making sure their frequency doesn't compete with the regular snaps from friends that we all enjoy.