Snapchat's Mobile Revenue Crossed a Big Milestone
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps - Nothing but Growth!. Check out the full article for more insights.
When Snapchat's paid subscription went live I said no one would pay to be a beta tester. More than a year later, Snapchat+ just had its highest month of revenue ever and managed to cross a milestone.
The secret to its success is evolution.
Let's have a look at the latest numbers.
Snapchat ended November with $22M of net revenue from the App Store and Google Play, according to our estimates. That's a 23% increase from October and 216% higher than January.
Looking back at all of 2023, growth was fairly consistent with a single weirdness in September.
The App Store contributed most of Snapchat's revenue, roughly 89% in 2023 and 86% in November indicating revenue on Google Play is growing in share.
While the US contributed the majority of revenue, there are now four countries where net revenue is higher than $1M vs. just two in October.
Our estimates also show that in November, revenue in 81 countries rose double-digits. That includes small wins like revenue rising 75% in Egypt to $15K, slightly larger wins like revenue doubling in Argentina to $90K, to more substantial wins like revenue growing 58% in France to $1.2M.
So why are people doing what I thought they wouldn't and pay to be beta testers?!?!
Well... They're not!
Snapchat's paid subscription evolved a lot since inception. Early on it was very similar to Twitter Blue, which launched with a very boring set of features. Like Twitter Blue, growth was hard. But it evolved.
Today's version of the subscription actually offers useful things along with the one killer feature, which is... a badge. If you like pricing strategies as much as I do, there's a lot to learn from this one.
Snap wasn't the first to monetize its users but so far it's ahead of the rest showing how important the kind of user you have is. Twitter's audience is "everyone" which makes them very hard to monetize. It's not impossible, clearly, but it's much harder and if I had to guess I'd say most of Twitter's revenue growth is coming from new users who fit the new X.
Although this revenue isn't going to replace Snapchat's ad revenue which is in the billions, it's heading in the right direction to align the company with its users and not just see them as the product. I like that.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
