Snapchat will run ads alongside messages

Evan Spiegel, CEO of Snapchat, announced that Snapchat will soon start testing sponsored messages in the friend's message section.

Ads (or sponsored Snaps) will appear as unread messages in the main chat tab, meaning they will even appear above friends' messages until the user clicks on the ad. This is the most used part of the platform, so it is likely that users will soon express their dissatisfaction.

Spiegel said in an online post that the ads will appear "without a push notification, opening the message is optional." It is not yet clear whether users will be able to remove the ad without opening it, or what the process of interacting with the ads will be.

"Sponsored Snaps allow advertisers to communicate visually with the Snapchat community," says Spiegel, emphasizing that conversations with friends will remain private and not used for advertising purposes.

Snapchat has 850 million monthly users, and it would be logical to assume that the company is doing well. Quite the opposite. Shares are near their all-time lows, largely due to the fact that they have so far failed to create a good advertising strategy.

"The growth of our digital advertising business is one of the most important contributors to our long-term revenue potential, and investors are concerned that we are not growing faster," Spiegel wrote in his note. It also says that Snap will begin allowing advertisers to pay to promote places in the Map tab, where Snapchat users can see where their friends are located.

This is the strategy used by social platforms. Startups are always user-friendly. Once the platform gathers enough users, however, profit-making strategies begin to emerge. If you had similar advertising strategies from the beginning, loyal users would be less disappointed when new ones were added on the fly. Once you get used to completely free use without annoying ads and other marketing tricks, it's hard to get used to a completely different platform operation.