After a disappointing earning report, and poor projections,Snapchat announces a pair of upcoming changesaimed at increasing revenue.
Snapchat has been losing to Instagram over the last few months, and a few pricey gambles have yet to pay off. They were forced to take a substantial loss after failing to sell any relevant amount of their face mounted camera, Spectacles. They’ve been left with hundreds of thousands of unsold inventory, just sitting in a warehouse.
Aside from unsold Spectacles, the bad news continues as they they also only addedabout half the expected number of users in their latest quarter. The short-term future doesn’t look to be any better for Snap, Inc.
They’ve given guidance that the next quarter may take a hit in the short term with the launch of a radical new redesign, but will have long term benefits. The updated app isdue to be released on December 4th.
Now, they have announced a couple of features aimed at increasing revenue, and increasing their success long-term.
The first is promoted stories. They tie together a series of individual Snaps into a slideshow. These will be displayed as a tile on the Stories page, and shown to everyone in a specific country.
The second feature is Augmented Reality Trial ads. They will allow you to try out a product in AR before committing to buy.
“Our advertising partners have been asking for ways to tell deeper stories on mobile” Peter Sellis, Snap’s Director of Revenue Product, said in a statement.
There is no word as of yet of whether Snapchat is leveraging Apple’s ARKit framework for this latter feature.
So what do you think of Snapchats upcoming advertiser-friendly features? Will these make you more likely to interact with them?
