Spooky Snapchat ad promotes its AR filters; SNAP’s Q4 earnings produce stock sell-off

By Scott Marlette Last updated Feb 1, 2023

Snapchat ran a commercial during last week’s AFC Championship game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Cincinnati Bengals. The 30-second ad promotes the app’s AR filters but some viewers felt that the spot was creepy, to say the least. That’s because the ad starts by stating “Our eyes can only see so much. But what if they could see more?”

The HorseHead lens is used to turn co-workers into horses and the spooky wide-eyed look at the end of the ad comes from the Shook lens. To find it on Snapchat, open the app and tap the smiley face icon to the right of the camera shutter button. Tap on the Explore tab on the bottom right and type “Shook” in the search bar and the first filter is the one used in the ad.

Snapchat is the 12th most popular social media app worldwide

There are two versions of the commercial, a 60-second spot and the 30-second spot that was shown during the football game. During the fourth quarter (of the year, not the game), the app had 375 million daily active users. It is the 12th most popular social media app worldwide. If you have an iPhone, you can install the app from the App Store, or if you have an Android device, download it from the Google Play Store. The ad says that with the filters “you can make imaginary friends real or see your real friends in an imaginary way.”

What if our eyes could see more? Scan this spot with your Snapchat camera to start exploring the unseen world around you. pic.twitter.com/CFji0gtJKL

— Snapchat (@Snapchat) January 27, 2023

The comments from Twitter users were pretty much along the lines of this response from Van Lathan Jr who wrote that “this Snapchat commercial is demonic af.” Alison Haislip asked, “Nobody was okay with that Snapchat commercial, right?” And Rosa Sparks tweeted this, “Well that Snapchat commercial was unnecessarily terrifying.”

You can’t help but feel bad for Snapchat. After all, it was the app that introduced social media subscribers to “Stories.” Instagram took the idea and ran with it…all the way to the bank. Instagram Stories is one of the most popular features of the Meta-owned app.

Snapchat reported Q4 profits of 14 cents a share, three cents a share above estimates

Snapchat parent SNAP reported its Q4 earnings yesterday and revenue, at $1.30 billion, failed to meet analyst estimates of $1.31 billion. Earnings at 14 cents a share, topped the consensus estimates of 11 cents per share. And the average revenue per user came in at $3.47 per share which was 2 cents a share below the figure that analysts were expecting Snapchat to report.

For all of 2022, revenue rose 12% to $4.6 billion. In a statement, the company said, “On the monetization side, we anticipate that the operating environment will remain challenging, as we expect the headwinds we have faced over the past year to persist throughout Q1.” Now that doesn’t sound so good, does it?

The company’s Snapchat+ subscription service, which offers pre-release and exclusive features for only $3.99 per month, now has over 2 million subscribers after debuting last summer.

Overall, investors are planning to spank SNAP on Wednesday morning as the stock dropped nearly 15% in after-hours trading to $9.83.

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