.png)
2 hours ago
2 ARTICLE AD
UPDATED with CEO comments on TikTok: “The overall environment of uncertainty” around TikTok has been a boon to Snapchat’s business, said Evan Spiegel, CEO and founder of the social media platform’s parent Snap.
“Certainly, advertisers are very focused on contingency planning and diversifying their spend. And I think the same goes for creators who are really thinking hard about how they can build the most diversified engagement with their fan base across various platforms, including Snapchat.”
He declined to quantify or say anything more definitive, calling the issues around TikTok hae “sort of been an imperfect experiment, so we’re not trying to draw too many conclusions from some of the engagement lift we saw when the app went went dark for that brief period of time,” he said.
Snap’s priority now “is really just helping make sure we support advertisers and creators during this period of uncertainty. And for creators in particular, we’ve been spending a lot of time working on just improving that overall creation flywheel. I mean, that’s why we’re seeing, you know, 40% increase in the number of creators posting to Snapchat. And I think in Q4 we actually reached a billion public posts a month on Snapchat. So the public content ecosystem is growing in a really nice and healthy way. And we’re just going to continue our focus there when it comes to our strategy and participation.
PREVIOUSLY: Snapchat parent Snap beat quarterly estimates as daily active users hit 453 million, up by 39 million.
Revenue was on the high side of expectations, up 14% to $1.55 billion, as Snap swung to profit of $9 million from a $248 million loss in the prior year quarter. Shares ended 4% higher today and are up another 9% in after-market trading on the numbers.
Direct response ad revenue growth was up 14% year-over-year in Q4 and was the largest driver of our ad revenue growth in 2024. In 2024, Snapchat+ subscribers grew from 7 million to 14 million.
More than one billion Snaps were shared publicly on Snapchat every month in Q4 “from our community, creators, and media partners,” the company said.
“In 2024 we made significant progress on our core priorities of growing our community and improving depth of engagement, driving top line revenue growth and diversifying our revenue sources, while building toward our long-term vision for augmented reality,” noted CEO Evan Spiegel. “Active advertisers more than doubled in Q4, with the improvements we have made to our advertising platform driving improved advertiser performance and helping to grow revenue.”
The numbers hit as the social media company earlier today unveiled an AI text-to-image research model for mobile devices that will power some of Snapchat’s features in the coming months as well as new activations for Super Bowl LIX, including themed Lenses.
Snap said the AI model can produce high-resolution images in around 1.4 seconds on an iPhone 16 Pro Max. It runs entirely on the device, which reduces computational costs compared to models that rely on large servers. Snap said it can create “stunning” visual results by “transferring rich representations from large-scale diffusion models to this smaller and more efficient model.”
It plans to bring the model into production in the coming months to help power the app’s AI Snaps, AI Bitmoji Backgrounds, and more and says that its in-house technology will provide quality AI tools at a lower cost.
“Snap has a long history of research excellence in model optimization and efficiency,” the company said in a blog post. “We are inspired by the industry innovation that is making AI tools more efficient, affordable, and accessible and we look forward to continuing to contribute to the rapid pace of innovation, particularly for mobile-first experiences.
Also today, Snap also noted a new study showing Snapchat users are highly engaged with sports and major sporting events, which it calls an area of growth. As Super Bowl LIX approaches, Snap unveiled new Lenses, or digital overlays, for NFL fans in its app including a jersey Lens and virtual football helmets – all found at the ‘Super Bowl AR Bar and Lens Collection’. Snap partners on Super Bowl promotions, include NERDS and Uber Eats. In partnership with the NFL, Snapchat will be powering digital overlays at the game.
