Why Snapchat is the antidote to social media | Sara Antonelli from Snap

I'm now joined by Sarah Anadelli from Snapchat. How are you doing?
Yeah, doing well. How are you?
I'm very good. I understand you've just done a talk.
Yes, I did.
All good. All successful. Did said what you need to say.
Good. All good. Happy to see the crowd.
Yes.
Taking pictures of the data slides.
Excellent. Well, pictures are the name of the game, aren't they? For yourself. So, I wanted to talk to you about the history of the company. Like Snapchat started back in 2011 is a veteran app at this point in a in an everchanging industry. What is Snapchat in 2025? How have things changed?
You know, a lot has changed, but as you said, we are very long in the gaming. Um, and to be honest, one of the part of the talks that I like the most is how our users actually grew up with us. The average of the Snapchatter today is like closer to 35 years old. And that's my age. And

then we often say, you know, like if you were a kid in college that you downloaded the app for the first time, played with a bit of face swap at the beginning, you came to grow up with the app and today this is our core user audience. So, we're no longer obviously catering only for Gen Z, but our core audience grew up with us and they seeing how the app evolved in all its ways. And we're not only now cutting edge when it comes like to our AR solutions with augmented reality and opening to the camera, but also we're like part of the users's daily life. So they open the chat app like 40 times a day to speak to their friends and family. And I think that's how we evolved from being, you know, like a social media platform that you can do a little play around with pictures and a little bit of augmented reality to be a foundational

social platform to actually connect people to each other and take that a level or a step further into building the relationships through social. And it is all about engagement and connection. That's like the fundamental building blocks of it. So in a world that's full of competition and distractions and things that are going to pull people away from your platform, how do you ensure that users stay that they remain in your ecosystem for as long as they have?
That's a quite a good question because we are so proud ourselves that we have like a very strong LTV. If you think about like 14 years long social platform, we often say that we are almost the antidote to social media as well. Just because these days like there's obviously a lot of talk on how social media can also be a little bit harming and a little bit more towards something that's addicting in terms of content and perhaps not quite healthy from a social

perspective. people always looking for likes or like that type of engagement. But with building that close community as Snapchat, we were able to kind of revert that and if you know you have your close friends there, you're always able to come back to a safe environment that you just want to make sure that you're building those connections and feeling good within the relationships that you have built. So, in that sense, I think we're different than anyone else and that's why users keep on coming back.
That's interesting to know. Well, I mean, for people who maybe haven't used the app, so you've got your legacy customers, for example, the people you were talking about, firsttime consumers, people who are like, you know, the the Gen Z's, the Gen Alphas, Gen betas coming up who are going to be like, I've got so many options. I can go to WhatsApp, Signal. You there all these different places you can you can dive in. Even Spotify's got a DM system now, I just learned, which is ridiculous. So, how do you attract new users? How do you entice the next generation in?

Yeah, that's that's quite a good question because as I said in my talk, we last year we actually developed what we call Snapchat Plus. So, we really started to really dive in into the user behavior because this NAP has like we have four different apps. So, you have the chat which is the most used one. we open to the camera which is more fun and innovative but then we have obviously the content session and we also have maps which is very very interesting. So if you think in a nutshell is an app that has it all. Uh and I think at the end of the day by understanding the user journey and how the user is connected within the app empowered us allowed us to also even build a different model which uh is called Snapchat plus which is a subscription based model that allows users to actually explore different areas of the app. So for example if you recall Bitmoji is like one of the also legacy things about snap. You can really

tailor your outfit on the day. You can buy new pieces. You can buy the brands you like. For example, within the map, you can actually tailor in such way that you can have your pet next to you. You can build your own house and your flat. So, in simple ways, we were able to innovate so much to the way that the users are likely more to engage with the features that we have. And one step further, you can even continue to innovate on building things that you're not able to do elsewhere. So just looking at how the user engage with the different areas of the app just empowered us to build that next level of service you must say for the users so they can keep engaging with that
offering something a little bit different a different flavor won't you? So obviously Snapchat is something that in addition to subscription tiers you run on advertising and that's a model. So if you and obviously a lot of people use Snapchat as their own advertising

vector as a way to promote them stuff. So, I'm sure you've seen everything as a member of the company. What's the key to a really good Snapchat ad? How do you make a little 10 something that catches some? What's what's the recipe?
Yeah. So, I always say you have to be native to the platform. But then people always ask, but what what is native to the platform? You have four tabs. You have, you know, like the map, you have uh lenses which can be gamified and what not. We always say, well, uh, a native ad snapp is something that's quite snappy, is like straight to the point, calls your attention from the get- go and has some element that it brings some narrative. So, it can be something along the lines of like bringing the map to reality. We have like a lot of cases that actually gaming apps that have uh the map in the ecosystem of their game actually replicate the snap map to bring that into their user acquisition effort. So there's this level of familiarity to the user and the results are really

great or even like leveraging the chat box as almost kind of like a way that you are able to connect with your friends and you use that into the uh user acquisition aspect and that eventually just brings that level of um familiarity to the user. So that's often what we suggest is like say in a snap. So be very snappy and to the point to call the user attention and then obviously build something that's native to the platform.
Gotcha. Fascinating. So we looked at some financials and some statistics and bits and bobs. Your Q1 2025 report pointed to 15 million paid subs. You mentioned Snapchat Plus earlier and obviously that's a a big driver and a big increase versus the previous year. So, how does that new system factor into your monetization plans going forward? Because for the longest time, it's been ad based, adore, and this is kind of new. How much how big a push is this going to be? How much of the business are you expecting this to to supplement?

Yeah, at the at the minute it's like actually is one of the largest growth drivers to the platform and maybe we all almost underestimate the power that you know a subscription model would have but I think our users just love the product so much that they're willing to pay for new features that others might not be able to have or have that uniqueness about something that's tailored and custom to them. So moving forward because we're seeing such like a huge growth lever within Snapchat plus we in future going to develop turing solutions. So today, like a regular subscription is a simple $399 and you're able to have like you can customize the app, you can uh have new features within the the map, but we're going to have taring systems and then the highest tiering system then it

allows the users to actually have like a better selection if they're going to be ser if we're going to be serving ads in certain areas of the app or not. So for example in chat feeds they can be excluded from being served at. So there's all in the tiering system. So it's in the process of testing today and we understand that's also going to be like one of the further levers for growth. And on top of that we're then enhancing our ad stack solutions really working around building a ad stack that's very performant especially for from a lowerfunnel perspective. So we can have two things as growth levers. one that we're focusing on driving a different type of subscription model with a taring system and then from the ad stack then understanding okay with that user behavior how can we then empower our algorithm to be able to then define these categories of like not only taring but understanding you know how the users behave in that way so leaned in into the app and it features and

empower and translating this to user acquisition channels for himself. [music]