Snapchat—ready to actually bring in revenue—will start showing ads this weekend, and the messaging app gave a better understanding of how marketing will arrive in users' inboxes with a blog post today.
Snapchat said ads will show up in the "recent updates" feed that show users a list of the latest messages.
The L.A.-based startup, worth about $10 billion with investor interest from companies including Yahoo, has been slowly teasing its advertising potential for a couple weeks. CEO Evan Spiegel announced ad plans at a Vanity Fair tech conference earlier this month.
Now, the company promised that promoted snaps would be pushed to the 100 million-user community during the next couple of days. It was unclear how many of the users would see the ad, and Snapchat did not reveal the name of the first sponsor (or sponsors).
"It's the first time we've done anything like this because it's the first time we've been paid to put content in that space," Snapchat said in its blog post. "It's going to feel a little weird at first, but we're taking the plunge."
The ads will show up as Snapchat messages and be available for users to open for 24 hours, like other messages.
Brands like Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Audi, MTV and plenty of others already use the app to message fans.
The company said the ads would be “fun and informative, the way ads used to be, before they got creepy and targeted.”
Of course, targeting is an issue in general for Snapchat because it collects less data on users than say a Facebook or Twitter.
“Understandably, a lot of folks want to know why we’re introducing advertisements to our service,” Snapchat said. “The answer is probably unsurprising—we need to make money.”
