Snap Stock Plummets, As Apple Privacy Changes Dent Ad Revenues

Snap announced in its quarterly earnings report that it now counts 306 million average daily users — up 57 million users year-over-year.

Snap also said content submissions for its new TikTok-like Spotlight platform doubled over Q2 — amid the rollout of new monetization incentives, including Spotlight Challenges. The company touted two Snap Originals, Meme Mom and Honestly Loren, that have each surpassed 10 million viewers.

Despite this growth, however, Snap’s stock plummeted after the company projected revenues of between $1.16 and $1.2 billion for Q4 — far below analyst estimates of $1.4 billion, according to The Financial Times. Revenues for Q3 rose 57% to 1.07 billion, which was also short of previous guidance.

In addition to the broader ramifications of the coronavirus pandemic, Snap blamed the losses on a new privacy policy instituted by Apple

that requires iPhone users to opt-in to being tracked. The change, which began rolling out this summer, makes it harder to measure ad performance, and has subsequently dented Snap’s ad business — and, presumably, the business of every other ad-based social service.

As a result, Snap stock plummeted in after-market trading yesterday, wiping out roughly $30 billion from the company’s market value, according to the Times.

“This has definitely been a frustrating setback for us,” Snap CEO Evan Spiegel told investors. “But I think over the long term these privacy changes, and protecting privacy for users of iOS…is something that we fully support.”