How Snap is emphasizing online joy

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Specs aren’t the only thing that’s got people talking about Snapchat.

At NewFronts earlier this year, the social media platform disclosed massive usage numbers: 2 trillion snaps sent in 2025, or about 63,000 sent every second. Ajit Mohan, chief business officer at parent company Snap, Inc., said that advertisers have responded positively to the figures—along with Snapchat’s rejuvenated ad platform, which Mohan said the company has spent years rebuilding.

“We know the progress that we have been making on the platform is pretty dramatic. I think in the last six months, marketers are starting to see it on their own dashboards,” Mohan told us. “I have definitely seen that energy in my conversations with CMOs and our partners, that they’re finally like, ‘Okay, you guys are back.’”

At Cannes Lions, Mohan sat down with Marketing Brew to talk about how the company is approaching AI, whether ads work in a messaging platform, and how to position a social platform when being offline is cooler than ever. Here are some highlights.

On building an online place that sparks joy: We have a bit of a task to do for all stakeholders, especially the people outside of our community who may have bracketed it all into this single, lumpy bucket of social media. We have to explain who we are and really show why we are different in a way that the community really understands it. I think that’s why when you ask Snapchatters, it keeps coming back again and again that they find this to be a joyful experience, exactly because it is not the feed, it is not the scroll, it is not a place for public projection. It’s a place where you can be authentic and yourself, and I think all of the conversation that is happening around the world actually is really an enabler for us, and if anything, it should remind people why we are different and special.

On differentiating ad tech offerings: If we can address simplicity and make it easier for marketers to get the best out of us, [and] if we can leverage our superpower—which is in a world where, given all of the interest in AI both from consumers and marketers, there’s a huge opportunity for us to leverage on [the fact that] a lot of that AI is really conversations-led and we are a conversations platform...we’re doing it in a way where we’re opening it up for marketers’ agents. I think our strength is neutrality. We don’t have our own agenda when it comes to our own model, and therefore I think we have the ability to really open up our platform for what marketers want to do.