The app may be on every young person’s phone, but it’s losing money.
When it launched its IPO this year, it raised $3.4b.
But as of January, it’s lost $1.2b. Almost half of that loss was in 2016.
It was growing at 15m new daily users in the first 3 quarters of 2016, but the last quarter had just 5m new users.
Snapchat is trying to make money by employing industry experts, and they will be setting their sights on combating competitors who do basically the same thing as Snapchat — Instagram with Stories and WhatsApp with Status. They will also be trying to win away advertising investment from other platforms.
However, investment in video ads is growing steadily, adding about $5 per year since 2014. Growth expected to increase, and be worth $90m in 2020, up from today’s $75m.