Snap Seeks Ads From Pharmaceutical Companies

In an effort to have big pharma companies advertise on Snapchat, the social media platform is reportedly pitching itself as a friendlier alternative to Twitter and Facebook.

The idea is that younger people might be more open to ads focusing on health matters — and may be more comfortable talking about private matters on the platform, CNBC reported.

The social media company had a team speak at the DigiPharma Connect conference in February. A director of health for Snap, along with the company’s sales lead for health, spoke at the event. “Be prepared for an interactive conversation around DTC (direct to consumer) advertising on a smaller screen,” an agenda from the conference reportedly stated.

Snap says its app encourages shared content between friends that are close, which opens the door to discussing personal matters. An eMarketer report from June noted that pharma digital ad spending came to $2.52 billion in 2017. That spend will likely top $3 billion by the close of 2019.

The news comes after Snap Inc. saw its stock price leap 21 percent after it announced earnings at the beginning of February that exceeded expert predictions across the board. Snap posted $0.04 loss per share, which was better than the Street’s forecast of $0.07. Snap revenues hit $390 million versus the $378 million forecast pre-earnings release. Additionally, the company had a daily average user count of 186 million compared to the expected 184.26.

Snap CEO Evan Spiegel said in a statement at the time, “We ended the year with user engagement stabilizing and have started rolling out the new version of our Android application to a small percentage of our community.” Reports also indicated that the company’s stock price jumped 50 percent and surpassed its IPO price during its Q4 earnings report at the same time last year.