Snap crushed Wall Street's revenue targets in its fourth quarter, as it filled its Snapchat app with more ads than ever and tapped into a broader group of consumers.
The Snapchat maker's stock rose as much as 30% in after-hours trading as Wall Street cozied up to the fact that the company is making big changes to its business after its rocky IPO last year that sent its valuation tanking.
Perhaps most importantly for Snap's Q4 revenue results was the shift in its business to an automated auction-based advertising system, or programmatic advertising. That helped boost the number of ads featured in its app by 4X the amount from the same time last year, with 90 percent of the ads now coming from programmatic systems, according to the company.
To read more about Snap's surprising fourth quarter win, click here.
In related news:
Snap seems to finally be following Facebook and Google's revenue playbook. The company's ad auction finally kicked into gear in Q4 and the company is seeing traction among small and mid sized advertisers, which has long been the secret to Facebook and Google's success.
Snapchat's big bet on augmented reality seems to be paying off. The rollout of Lens Studio, which allows anybody to create their own AR experience with a set of desktop creative tools, has been a bright spot for the company: over 30,000 lenses were created just six weeks into its launch, with the lenses viewed over one billion times.
But there's one big problem with Snap CEO Evan Spiegel's latest indictment of Facebook. Unlike Facebook, Spiegel said that Snapchat hasn't focused on encouraging users to "like" posts or follow other users, but Snap encourages users to keep coming back to its app in other ways - most notably through streaks.
In other news:
It looks like the anthem protests hurt the Super Bowl ratings - and it should set alarm bells ringing on Wall Street and Madison Avenue. UBS conducted a survey of 2,000 fans, and half of the respondents who claim to be less interested in the NFL say it's because of the protests.
Wendy's brutal ad campaign slamming McDonald's could completely backfire. McDonald's plans to roll out fresh, never frozen beef for certain burgers at nearly all US restaurants by mid-2018.
Facebook employed a pollster to track CEO Mark Zuckerberg while he toured the US; but the man quit after six months. "I couldn't change the values. I couldn't change the culture. I was probably far too optimistic," Tavis McGinn said.
Russian trolls used Tumblr to pose as black activists and spread anti-Hillary Clinton and pro-Bernie Sanders memes, according to BuzzFeed research. This is the first time Tumblr has been implicated in the wider scandal around Russian groups using social media to spread misinformation around elections.
Vice missed its $805 million revenue target for 2017 by more than $100 million, the Wall Street Journal reports. The shortfall is largely due to its struggling cable channel Viceland, which is only drawing an average of 55,000 prime-time viewers among the 18-to-49 demo.
Tronc is in advanced talks to sell the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal reports. The deal is being discussed for $500 million to billionaire investor Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong.
Viacom laid off approximately 100 employees as part of an effort to save $100 million. It is also shaking up leadership at Nickelodeon, bringing in Sarah Levy to help oversee the children's television network.
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