Snapchat Users Are Going To Totally Freak Out Over This Major Change

I barely even use Snapchat, and I'm already irritated at the app's latest change.

In its quest to figure out how to make money and possibly move closer to an initial public offering, Snapchat is taking a huge dive into video advertising.

Yes, according to Adweek, Snapchat will now run video ads in between your friends' stories to give advertisers a better shot at reaching some of the company's 150 million daily users. The video ads will be known by the extremely clever name Snap Ads Between Stories.

The company's first chief strategy officer, Imran Khan, known for his role in Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba's IPO, told Adweek this huge rollout was just the beginning.

I think advertising is a very large opportunity, and we're just getting started.

But, the company's already done way more than "just get started." Snapchat already has 10 advertising partners lined up, including Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Verizon, Procter & Gamble, Warner Bros. and Express.

To help encourage companies to start advertising on its platform, Snapchat also partnered with a number of creative agencies with expertise in making Snapchat ads, as well as agencies that can help with the tech and analytics side of advertising.

Peter Sellis, Snapchat's head of monetization product, told Adweek,

We have to be thoughtful about the inventory, ad load and the ad experience. But we also know that we cannot build custom ad-tech solutions for every big type of advertiser, for every vertical. And so these [partners] really excel in those kinds of ways.

Though the ads will occasionally show up in between different stories as users auto-advance, they won't appear in the middle of one story in an attempt to not overwhelm users, according to TechCrunch.

To that end, Snapchat also will apparently review every ad. I don't know how much reviewing every ad will really help Snapchat's users, but it's good to see Snapchat being proactive about this rollout.

Sellis added,

By doing this the right way, focused on creativity and doing it early, it allows us to be extraordinarily conservative.

Well, Snapchat can try to sell me on the idea of ads in any way it wants, but I'm still not buying.

Citations: Snapchat Launches a Colossal Expansion of Its Advertising, Ushering in a New Era for the App (Adweek), Snapchat paves way to IPO with Ads API and inserts between stories (TechCrunch), Snapchat will fill the gap between your friends' stories with ads (Android Central), THE SNAPCHAT STATISTICS EVERY MARKETER NEEDS TO KNOW (Mediakix)