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Snapchat ad revenue to pass £100m this year

March 19, 2018

In its first-ever ad revenue forecast for Snapchat, eMarketer expects the mobile social network to generate almost £105 million (€110m) in UK revenues this year—almost double the amount from the prior year.

In 2015, Snapchat derived 95.9 per cent of its global ad revenues from the US. This year, that proportion will fall to 75.8 per cent, as the platform continues to add users outside its core geography. The UK will account for 10 per cent of Snap’s worldwide revenues in 2018.

While Snapchat has seen—and will continue to see—explosive growth in both users and ad revenues, it will make up just less than 1 per cent of UK digital ad spend this year. By comparison, Facebook (Snap’s rival) will grab more than a fifth of UK ad spend. A fairer comparison would be with Instagram, but even here Snapchat’s revenues won’t measure up, with the Facebook-owned platform expected to pull in 5 per cent of all digital ad spend.

Combined, Google and Facebook will dominate the UK digital market for the foreseeable future; this year, they will take more than 60 per cent of all UK digital ad revenues.

“Snapchat continues to pull in users and, by extension, ad revenues,” said Bill Fisher, eMarketer’s UK senior analyst. “An almost doubling of revenues in 2018 is a great result. But while the user base continues to be dominated by younger age groups, that revenue potential will remain somewhat restricted. And with the financial muscle of Facebook behind close-competitor Instagram, Snap’s going to have to work ever harder for those ad dollars.”

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