Snapchat shared in its quarterly earnings report that it now counts 293 million daily users — an increase of 55 million users (or 23%) over Q2 last year. Revenues increased 116% year-over-year to $982 million, the company reported.
At the same time, Snapchat said that daily users of its TikTok-like Spotlight hub grew 49%, while content submissions tripled and time spent by users in the U.S. also climbed 60%.
This growth arrived amid myriad Spotlight updates, including a web destination enabling viewers to browse content without a Snapchat account, and new monetization opportunities, such as virtual gifts the company calls Snap Tokens. Though CEO Evan Spiegel noted that the company is not yet ready to implement ads within the Spotlight hub.
Subscribe for daily Tubefilter Top Stories
“We’ve done some small testing with advertising in Spotlight, so that we’re ready when we want to turn on,” he said in an earnings call. “But for now, we’re just really focused on the core experience…We’ve got a great roadmap of improvements. And we just don’t want the team to get distracted frankly with monetization at this point.”
Snapchat also touted its international growth, noting that it has launched 177 Discover channels, including 36 in the U.K. and 24 in India — where daily time spent watching Snap Originals and premium publisher content has increased by 150% year-over-year. All told, Snapchat says it counts 500 content partners in 17 countries.
“Our second quarter results reflect the broad-based strength of our business, as we grew both revenue and daily active users at the highest rates we have achieved in the past four years,” Spiegel said in a statement. “We are pleased by the progress our team is making with the development of our augmented reality platform, and we are energized by the many opportunities to grow our community and business around the world.”
Looking to Q3, Snapchat is projecting revenues of roughly $1.1 billion — a roughly 60% increase over the $679 million it took in in Q3 2020.
