Snapchat is working on a new way to make money off your selfies

Snapchat already has hundreds of millions of users, now all it needs to do is find a way to make money from them. This is much harder than it sounds, and Snapchat has spent the last year or so experimenting with ways to monetize in search of something that’ll really get the cash flowing, such as the paid replays feature it added a few weeks ago. The company’s next experiment is expected to come in the form of sponsored lenses, according to the Financial Times, which will allow advertisers to pay Snapchat thousands of dollars to reach its entire userbase for one day. 

Looking for more ways to boost revenue within the company, Snapchat is attempting to monetize the company’s new lens feature by selling “sponsored lenses” to advertisers as early as the end of October 2015. Targeting major holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving and Black Friday for this type of advertising buy, Snapchat plans to charge advertisers as much as $750,000 to reach the entire Snapchat userbase for a single day. As detailed by the Financial Times, Snapchat will be pricing “off peak” days, basically days outside of holidays, at a cost of $450,000. While both figures sound relatively high, the potential reach for advertisers is vast as nearly 100 million people use Snapchat every day. Assuming just five percent of Snapchat’s daily active audience used a branded lens on one of the $750,000 days, that will only cost the brand 15 cents per user. If a branded picture with a lens filter is sent to another user, that would double the reach and reduce the cost even further.