Snap unveils new ad offerings and stresses authenticity in its 2023 NewFronts presentation

If there’s one photo-sharing app that emphasizes spontaneous photo sharing and being real, it’s…Snapchat. At least that’s what the company would like you to think.

At its NewFronts presentation, Snap executives repeatedly emphasized how “real relationships” with users drives “real influence” for brands. Snap President of the Americas Rob Wilk called Snapchat the “antidote to traditional social media,” later adding that it is where users can be their “truest selves with their closest people.”

The company’s pitch to marketers, featuring new ad products, comes in the wake of some marketing shake-ups and less-than-ideal quarterly results.

So what’s new? During the presentation, execs focused on Snapchat’s growing user base; daily active users grew 15% last quarter. It also announced new advertising formats, including:

• First Story, which lets advertisers buy the first ad slot users see between friends’ stories. Louis Vuitton and Warner Brothers were named as early adopters of the ads.
• Spotlight ads, which will appear in the app’s UGC-driven, TikTok-like Spotlight section and is aimed at helping advertisers to work more easily with creators on the platform.
• The Snap Star Collab Studio, which will let advertisers find “the most relevant creators based on [their] goals,” produce creative, and manage deliverables with them, per David Roter, Snap’s VP of global solutions.
• Sponsored links in My AI, the app’s AI chatbot. According to Wilk, one potential example could be providing a user with a link to a local restaurant if they inquire about where to go for dinner.

Quick refresh: There were some recent events that the presentation didn’t touch on, namely:

• Last month, Snap announced that CMO Kenny Mitchell was leaving, with former Chief Creative Officer Colleen DeCourcy stepping in to lead marketing.
• The following week, Snap reported its first quarterly decline in revenue, falling 7%. In its Q1 shareholder letter, the company said the decline was due to a “continued disruption in demand” for advertising due to the economy and ad platform changes intended to drive more click-through conversions. While it called the changes “disruptive in the short term,” it also said the company is optimistic for future growth.
• On Monday, the company announced it was bringing on two former Meta executives, Patrick Harris and David Sommer, as SVP of partnerships and head of verticals, respectively, in an effort to expand ads sales, per Bloomberg.