With its recent follow-on offering, Snapchat is reportedly valued at $20 billion.

That's nearly double the value of Twitter, arguably the most high-profile social media giant to IPO in recent years.

Its CEO has signaled he plans on an eventual Snapchat IPO, so with the company's focus shifted toward monetization and revenue growth in coming years, let's review how Snapchat plans to make ever-greater sums of money in the years to come.

How does Snapchat make money?

Though very much in flux, co-founder and CEO Evan Spiegel has previously described Snapchat's business model as having three distinct points of monetization: camera, content, and communication. 

In terms of monetizing its camera interface, Snapchat has developed a branded geofilters business, which gives individuals and businesses the opportunity to purchase filters inside Snapchat's popular stickers section. For example, the recent X-Men: Apocalypse film paid to have branded X-Men filters take over Snapchat in the run-up to its launch. This campaign reportedly also included the functionality for users to swipe the filters to purchase tickets, which adds an e-commerce opportunity from which Snapchat could derive revenue.

Here's another example of a sponsored filter from the most recent Hunger Games movie:

In addition to these mass-market promotional campaigns, Snapchat also allows users to purchase sponsored filters covering smaller geographic areas. A friend of mine recently purchased one to cover the one-block area around the bar where he held his going-away party in New York City, where I live. This in some ways mimics how other social media giants like Facebook appeal to advertisers (or partiers, as it was in this case) both large and small.

Turning to media content, Snapchat launched its Discover functionality in January 2015, which allows major media outlets to push short-form content onto Snapchat for its video-hungry masses. It isn't clear how much revenue Snapchat generates from this business, but content distribution has already emerged as an obvious monetization point as Snapchat continues to grow its revenue.

The last -- and least defined -- area of Snapchat's business is communication. At present, Snapchat has no direct way for companies to connect with consumers via Snapchat's popular chat function, though a broader industry trend suggests an opportunity exists. As just one example, Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have both rolled out products that enable companies' customer service communications to flow through their services, rather than exist online or over the phone. Again, Snapchat's plans aren't clear, but Spiegel specifically mentioning communication as a piece of Snapchat's business model suggests it plans to monetize this popular part of its platform at some point in the future.

Snapchat's road to $1 billion in revenue

Snapchat's shift to prioritize revenue growth could produce surprising results sooner than many observers might realize. According to a recent investor presentation viewed byTechCrunch, Snapchat has told investors it expects 2016 revenue to fall between $250 million and $350 million, up from a reported $50 million in 2015.

However, with the full effect of its nascent monetization efforts continuing to scale, Snapchat has told investors it expects 2017 revenues to increase to between $500 million and $1 billion, an impressive figure for a company that launched in mid-2011. As a point of comparison for Snapchat's sales growth, it took Facebook six years to top $1 billion in sales. Twitter needed eight years.  

Many have questioned Snapchat's place as one of the most valuable start-ups in the world. But implausible as it might seem to those unfamiliar with it, Snapchat has a clear plan in place to make good on its valuation -- sooner, perhaps, than many realize.

Andrew Tonner has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Facebook and Twitter. We Fools may not all hold the same opinions, but we all believe that considering a diverse range of insights makes us better investors. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

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When you post something on Facebook, it's saved to your profile's timeline by default. It's what effectively makes Facebook the digital history of your life.

What if stuff you posted on Facebook wasn't tied to your profile forever?

Facebook is experimenting with making it easy to post without saving to your timeline, as first noticed by The Next Web's Matt Navarra. A "Hide From Your Timeline" button makes it so that whatever you post is only visible in peoples' News Feeds and in search.

Prompting people to share without having what they say necessarily tied to their profile could be seen as a nod to the appeal of Snapchat, the hot messaging app that makes everything you share disappear after 24 hours.

When reached for comment, a Facebook spokesperson told Tech Insider said that hide button is part of a test on a small segment of Facebook users. You can already hide posts from your profile's timeline once they're published — this button just makes it easy to do so while posting. 

“The Timeline on your profile is a great place to see a comprehensive history of your Facebook posts," the spokesperson said.

"We've heard feedback that sometimes, you may want to share a post with friends and family via News Feed and not have that post be displayed on your Timeline. The ability to hide a post from your Timeline already exists, and today we're testing a feature that would make it even easier to control where your posts live by giving you the option to publish a post only to News Feed and not to your Timeline.”

SEE ALSO: Snapchat could now be worth $20 billion

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The rumored redesign of Snapchat Discover is here. And it's a big one.

Snapchat has taken its Discover partners, which includes the likes of BuzzFeed and MTV, and put the content they produce alongside Snapchat's own curated Live Stories and original content.

You can also subscribe to Discover channels so you never miss their content.

Here's everything you need to know about Tuesday's big Snapchat update.

Snapchat's Stories page used to look like this:

Discover partners, which make original content in Snapchat every day, were shown at the top of the screen. You could tap on each circular tile to open a publisher's channel or swipe over into a list of all the Discover channels.

Under Discover you could find Snapchat's Live Stories, which are crowd-sourced from Snapchat users around the world and curated by Snapchat around a specific event, holiday, or theme.

Now, Discover looks like this:

The new design is much more visual and shows you a preview of what's inside each channel.

Snapchat's long-awaited redesign is finally here, and it's all about putting stories front and center. 

On Tuesday, the company is changing its Discover section so that there's no difference between the publishers in its app, like Mashable or Tastemade, or the live stories that it curates from around the globe.

All stories now scroll across the top of a user's story page tiles, complete with a headline and image. The same theme carries over to inside the Discover section, where the new image tiles make it feel more like a Pinterest or Instagram clone than it's looked like in the past.

Previously, the only way to distinguish between publications was their logos. Now, it's all about the story itself — the images and headlines combined.

Part of the reason is to attract users to publications they've never heard of, but might love anyways. It also helps people follow their favorites.

As part of the redesign, people can now "subscribe" to updates from a publication. 

By subscribing, the publication is added to the bottom of your stories friend feed permanently (or at least until you unsubscribe from them). In the past, media have complained that whether they are featured in that rotating carousel of icons at the top of the page impacts whether people read their stories or not.

Now with the option of subscribing, people don't have to ever miss a new story from their favorites — while the rest of the stories are amped up. Here's what Snapchat looked like before and after its big change:

SEE ALSO: 23 things you had no idea you could do in Snapchat

Before, the Discover section was split between publications and live sections. The new update combines them, and adds headlines and images to replace the logos.

The Discover page also got a dramatic overhaul. Gone are the circular logos. The new page features headlines and images for all the publications and the live stories.

Subscriptions are the newest feature. To follow updates from a favorite publisher, press and hold on a story to see the subscribe option.

Snapchat has been taken to a whole new level — literally. Eddie Bauer alpinists Adrian Ballinger and Cory Richards, two very experienced climbers, just came back from a no-oxygen Everest summit attempt up the north side of the mountain.

Although climbing Everest is a feat in itself, the two managed to keep their audience constantly up-to-date by Snapchatting though their EverestNoFilter story. Here is how they did it. 

Produced by Justin Gmoser

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Dubsmash quickly became an overnight success when it debuted in late 2014.

The app let users create videos of themselves lip syncing to popular songs or movie lines. But unlike Instagram or Vine, these videos, called "dubs," weren't shared directly onto Dubsmash. They were meant to go viral on other platforms. 

But, 100 million users and countless celebrity dubs later, Dubsmash is changing its tune.

Last month, the app was completely revamped to become a full-fledged messaging service. Dubsmash now lets users send private messages and videos to individuals and groups. Dubsmash also added Profile Dubs, which let users highlight their favorite dub and connect with friends, in addition to some new features that help users easily find videos and audio. 

As Dubsmash's president Suchit Dash told Tech Insider, it's all part of a plan to transform Dubsmash into the premiere video messaging platform. 

“A lot of people associated Dubsmash with karaoke and lip-syncing,” Dash said. “We think people, more and more, are going to communicate through video. And we want to be the primary way people do that.”

Celebrities have been central to Dubsmash's success. A number of famous faces posted dubs made by the app to their Instagram feeds. Jimmy Fallon, to the surprise of Dubsmash, asked Selena Gomez to make a dub during an appearance on "The Tonight Show." (He's since repeated the segment with Kate Hudson and Penelope Cruz.) And Rihanna teamed up with Dubsmash to debut her 2015 single "Bitch Better Have My Money" exclusively on the app. 

But Dubsmash observed something interesting: Most of its users were actually sharing their dubs privately among friends, rather than on public forums.

“They were people using dubs almost as a replacement of an emoji,” Dash said. “So, Dubsmash 2.0 is really about giving people space for them to connect with their friends.”

Since Dubsmash 2.0 launched on May 17, the app has seen 500,000 friend connections made each day and two dubs sent inside the application per second, according to data provided by Dash.

But of course, if Dubsmash wants to be the primary video messaging service, it will have to dethrone Snapchat. And that won't be an easy feat. In January, Snapchat confirmed to the Financial Times that the app has 6 billion video views per day on its platform. 

When Tech Insider asked about the inevitable comparisons to Snapchat, Dash said he considers the permanency of the dubs created on the app as a significant advantage.

“What’s amazing is the number of people that come back to see their dubs, almost like a work of art that they once created. It’s a very lasting format,” Dash said. “And we find users want that level of history.”

Dash says that Dubsmash is continuing to test new features, including tools focused on facial recognition, some of which users can expect this summer. Dubsmash will also be looking to form more partnerships with media and entertainment companies so they can promote their content with dubs on the app, similar to Snapchat's Discover platform.

But expect video messaging to remain Dubsmash's main focus.

“We want users to continuously come to the application and continuously create,” Dash said. “And messaging is the best way to make sure that there’s constant creation happening.”

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The role of social media in e-commerce is growing, but millennials are still not clicking the buy button on these channels.

But they're still utilizing these platforms before they buy.

A new GlobalWebIndex study suggests that millennial shoppers use Facebook, Twitter, and the like to research products before they buy them. According to the study, 40% of global consumers ages 16 to 24 use social media to research products. And 30% of the general population use these platforms for product research before they buy.

The study gives a bit more context to the role of social media in the purchase funnel. Social platforms do not drive many direct orders as a referral channel, as a mere 1% of all e-commerce orders in 2015 occurred from a direct social media referral, according to Custora.

But if younger consumers continue to use social media to discover and research products, then brands and retailers must maintain strong presences on Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, and more.

Cooper Smith, senior research analyst for BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report on social media's role in online retail.

The report analyzes whether social media is driving direct sales with the use of embedded "Buy" buttons on social media posts, or referring traffic to retailers' websites and apps. It measures the impact social media has on e-commerce by looking at metrics such as conversion rates, average order value, and revenue generated by shares, likes, and tweets. It also outlines the latest commerce efforts by leading social networks.

Here are some of the key points from the report:

• Social is driving much bigger increases in retail traffic than any other online channel. Social media increased its share of e-commerce referrals nearly 200% between the first quarters of 2014 and 2015.
• For retailers to maintain these social gains, they will need to pay special attention to mobile, where social engagement with retail content is still limited. Social media users are 35% less likely to share a brand's or retailer's social post on mobile than they are on desktop computers.
• Facebook continues to grow its lead as the dominant social commerce platform. Facebook accounts for 50% of total social referrals and 64% of total social revenue. The site's changing demographics could make older consumers a strong target for retailers leveraging the platform.
• Pinterest is a major social commerce player despite a relatively small user base. The pinning platform drives 16% of social revenue despite an audience 6.5 times smaller than Twitter. New buy and action buttons on retailer posts should make Pinterest an even stronger referral and revenue engine for brands.
• Twitter is losing its influence for mass-market merchants, but it could still have a role to play among sporting and events marketers, especially for location-based promotions. Recently, NFL and NBA teams have used Twitter to sell game tickets and merchandise.
• Instagram doesn't drive significant sales activity for retailers but high-end companies have been leveraging the platform for branding purposes. New Buy buttons on paid posts, as well as increased targeting capabilities, could make the app a more important direct-response driver.

In full, the report:

• Sizes social media's role for retailers compared to other referral sources such as search and email.
• Examines how social media's transition to mobile is impacting the role of different social platforms.
• Looks at how the different social networks stack up in terms of conversion rates, share of social-generated retail sales, and average order value.
• Highlights up-and-coming social commerce players such as Snapchat and Instagram, and how brands are using them for influencer marketing.
• Outlines the latest major commerce moves by Facebook and Twitter, which could help drive up conversion rates from social.

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
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The role of social media in e-commerce is growing, but millennials are still not clicking the buy button on these channels.

But they're still utilizing these platforms before they buy.

A new GlobalWebIndex study suggests that millennial shoppers use Facebook, Twitter, and the like to research products before they buy them. According to the study, 40% of global consumers ages 16 to 24 use social media to research products. And 30% of the general population use these platforms for product research before they buy.

The study gives a bit more context to the role of social media in the purchase funnel. Social platforms do not drive many direct orders as a referral channel, as a mere 1% of all e-commerce orders in 2015 occurred from a direct social media referral, according to Custora.

But if younger consumers continue to use social media to discover and research products, then brands and retailers must maintain strong presences on Facebook, Pinterest, Snapchat, and more.

For more, see the detailed report on social commerce from BI Intelligence.Click here to learn more about how you can gain risk-free access today.

Join the conversation about this story »

Snapchat has overtaken Instagram in the amount of time users spend in the app, according to a new report from app analytics company, App Annie.

In fact, Snapchat sits above three of Facebook's premiere apps in that category (WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram). It now only lags behind Facebook itself, with respect to iPhone users in the US.

Here is the chart:

This isn't the only statistic in which Snapchat has begun to beat Instagram. Snapchat has also caught up to and surpassed Instagram as the app of choice for teens, according to a recent survey by investment bank Piper Jaffray.

In fall 2015, Piper Jaffray's semi-annual survey of 6,500 US teens showed that 33% of them considered Instagram their most important social network. By this spring, that number had fallen to 27%.

Snapchat has trended in the opposite direction. In fall 2015, just 19% of teens said it was their most important social network. That ballooned to 28% this spring, edging out Instagram.

There have been signs that Facebook hasn't been entirely pleased with Instagram's performance of late. Facebook changed Instagram's logo design last month, and is in the midst of completely shaking up the way Instagram shows you photos, switching to an algorithmic ranking (like Facebook's own news feed), instead of presenting photos chronologically.

And Facebook has certainly noticed Snapchat's success. Since reportedly trying to buy Snapchat for $3 billion, Facebook has introduced a slew of Snapchat-like features to its own apps, including visual "codes," the ability to doodle on photos, and plans for animated filters following Facebook's acquisition of MSQRD.

But despite Snapchat's ascendance, Facebook-owned apps Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook (proper), still beat Snapchat in monthly active users. And 62% of app downloads in May were for apps owned by Facebook, according to Sensor Tower.

However the "time spent" metric suggests that Snapchat has found a way to keep its users engaged in the app, something Facebook has struggled with by certain metrics. Facebook is reportedly worried about a decline in "personal" sharing of things like status updates and photos.

Here is a chart showing the top apps by monthly active users:

SEE ALSO: This chart shows the staggering amount of original content Netflix produces compared to its rivals

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Snapchat confirmed Thursday it has formed a partnership with one of the hottest new analytics startups, Moat.

One of the criticisms that has often been lobbed at Snapchat in the past is that it didn't offer marketers many independent options to measure whether their ads actually reach the intended amount of people — and whether those people really paid attention to those ads.

When it comes to those kinds of analytics, marketers often had to rely on Snapchat's internal data. That comes with its own issues.

Internally, Snapchat counts a video "view" as soon as it appears on a user's screen — even if they only look at it for less than a second. In contrast, the industry standard for video viewability is that 2 consecutive seconds are watched and at least 50% of the video frame is on the screen.

But Snapchat appears to have listened to marketers' concerns and has steadily been ramping up its analytics offering. By inking the Moat deal, Snapchat now has partnerships with 10 third-party measurement firms including Nielsen, Millward Brown, Sizmek, and Innovate — up from just one a year ago, according to The Wall Street Journal.

With Moat, marketers (in the beta test, at least) can now make an apples-to-apples comparison between their Snapchat, YouTube, Facebook, or Instagram ads, the analytics company's CEO Jonah Goodhart explained to Business Insider.

As part of the partnership deal, Moat is also rolling out a few new metrics to its Moat Score for Video (a score from 0-100 so marketers can benchmark the performance of their ads across platform,) including the industry-standard two-second viewability measure, exposure time, whether the sound was turned on, and something called "screen real estate," which determines whether the ad was viewed in the optimum placement on a user's screen. Those metrics will also now be available across all the other platforms Moat has partnerships with.

Snapchat is also going to offer marketers the option to link Moat analytics with its other third-party analytics partners, so they can determine whether their ad had positive business results — such as lifts in brand resonance.

Snapchat is taking measurement "very seriously"

Goodhart said "mutual" discussions between Moat and Snapchat's chief strategy officer Imran Khan had been going on for several months before the deal was announced.

"The impression I got was that he was taking this very seriously," Goodhart said. "They're thinking about it the right way. They've raised a lot of money, it's a huge platform that's growing fast, and they need to put the right pieces in place. I'm very happy to work with Imran directly and happy that he's personally focused on this because there's obviously a lot of things on his plate."

Snapchat's Khan said in a statement: "Advertisers are asking for a clear definition of a video view. We are partnering with Moat to bring standard viewability measurement to Snapchat, and support Moat as they move the industry forward by delivering a new metric that measures sight, sound, and motion of a video."

In addition to the Moat deal, Snapchat also announced on Thursday it had formed a partnership with Google's DoubleClick that allows advertisers to tag their Snapchat videos and assess their performance on their DoubleClick Digital Marketing dashboards. Again, it means marketers can assess how Snapchat is performing versus the other platforms they advertise on — and it allows them to do that within another platform they have experience and trust in using.

Snapchat takes a swipe at Facebook

On Thursday, Snapchat also released the results of a study conducted by MediaScience that used eye tracking, biometric responses, and surveys to understand how 320 people in a lab setting reacted to video ads.

The study said Snapchat video ads commanded "over twice the visual attention of Facebook ads, over 1.5x the visual attention of Instagram ads, and 1.3x the visual attention of YouTube ads."

Snapchat's data also shows that two-thirds of its video snaps are consumed with the audio on — an obvious comparison to Facebook, where videos in the news feed autoplay silently by default. More than 10 billion videos are viewed every day on Snapchat.

In another swipe at its competitors, Snapchat said a Millward Brown study of 100 Snapchat campaigns found its video ads performed:

• 2.6x the norm for advertiser awareness
• 1.8x the norm for brand favorability
• 1.8x the norm for purchase intent

SEE ALSO: RANKED: The 37 hottest pre-IPO ad tech startups of 2016

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Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are some of the largest social media platforms in the world. But when it comes to online shoppers, they're no match to Pinterest.

According to data from Kleiner Perkins' 2016 Internet Trends report, charted for us by Statista, Pinterest was the most popular social media platform among online shoppers, with 55% of US internet users picking it as their top choice. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter all lagged way behind, with Snapchat only drawing 3% of the responses.

The report pointed out that Pinterest works well for shopping and finding products because of its image-based design. According to the report, 55% of US internet users indicated their primary use of Pinterest is for finding/shopping for products.

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Snapchat is rumored to be working on a Google Glass-style competitor, and it's continuing its hiring spree to recruit more people to its project.

Among the latest additions to Snapchat are two hardware specialists from action-camera maker GoPro, including a mechanical engineer, and the technical recruiter for Google's Project Aura, the group responsible for Glass.

A source familiar with the matter tells Business Insider that the company is "serious" about making a hardware play, though the person would not share details about the specific product.

Snapchat's hardware ambitions first came to light in March, when CNET pointed to an earlier string of notable hardware hires, including eyewear designer Lauryn Morries and a former employee who listed his experience as working on highly miniaturized and very low-power electronics.

CNET speculated that Snapchat could be working on a Google Glass-like device, which would mark a major expansion for the social-networking startup, currently valued at more than $18 billion.

Snapchat also quietly bought Vergence Labs, a company that specialized in a smart-glasses product that recorded video of what you see, in 2014.

Special initiatives

It looks like Snapchat isn't done building its hardware team.

Dan Stein, who led the recruitment for Project Aura, the home to Google Glass and other wearable initiatives, joined Snapchat in May, according to his LinkedIn bio. Stein's job at Snapchat is to be a recruiter for its "Special Initiatives."

Michael Ryner, who lists himself on LinkedIn as "Principal Mechanical Engineer," joined Snapchat in January.

John Novilla came on board in April as a Quality Engineer. Novilla's previous work at Microsoft included working with suppliers to ensure high-quality hardware for the Lumia Icon, a visual-quality role that meant that he was working directly with devices.

He's also not the only former Nokia hardware designer. Kun Huang worked on the designs of several Nokia phones and is now a designer at Snapchat.

The company appears to have big plans for augmented reality, which may tie in to the hardware effort. A job posting on Snapchat's website for a "3D mobile software engineer" provides a few intriguing clues, with requirements such as:

• Bring the most innovative product concepts to life to help push the boundaries of mobile user experience and interface design across a new category of computer vision products
• Investigate and solve exciting and difficult challenges in image recognition, classification, and augmented reality

The company is also still actively recruiting for its "Snap Lab" experimental division. Its job board currently lists four open positions, including a 3-D computer-vision engineer as well as a mobile-prototype developer.

Snapchat declined to comment or elaborate on its hardware plans.

SEE ALSO: Snapchat just launched a massive redesign to get people to read more stories

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There’s no doubt that messaging app Snapchat is on the brink of something huge.

The user metrics continue to impress, and the app just recently passed Twitter with 150 million daily active users. Snapchat has also vaulted past Instagram in time spent by users, making it the second-most used app by iPhone users, trailing only Facebook.

With a median user age of 18, Snapchat’s business premise is that it allows marketers to tap into the mysterious Millennial and Gen Z audiences that continue to perplex many brands. However, the jury is out on whether the app is delivering on this promise.

There’s now more than $2.65 billion of venture capital at stake that depends on solving the Snapchat monetization problem.

THE SNAPCHAT MONETIZATION PROBLEM

Today’s infographic shows the results from a survey of Snapchat users by NewsCred, a content marketing platform. The data paints a picture of Snapchat as an app that engages users, while whiffing on the branded content it needs to generate revenue.

In other words, if Snapchat is counting on advertising as its main monetization driver, it is going to need to get more users engaging with branded content. Then, Snapchat must able to prove that to advertisers through targeting, analytics, and other useful metrics.

SNAPCHAT IS GETTING SERIOUS

In the first half of 2016, Snapchat raised $1.8 billion in its Series F round at a flat valuation of $16 billion.

This says two things.

First, with an estimated $59 million in revenue in 2015, investors are worried about the Snapchat monetization problem. Otherwise, the company’s valuation would have risen from the previous Series E which took place over a year prior.

Second, this war chest of new capital is going to be used to pounce on revenue opportunities, as well as providing better analytics to advertisers.

To the latter point, Snapchat is now making major moves to deliver on the revenue front. The company recently poached a key ad exec from Facebook. The app also launched a revamped Snapchat Discover portal that allows major publishers like Cosmopolitan or BuzzFeed to get in on the action to share ad revenue. Snapchat is also finally getting serious about metrics, and that’s why the company signed with Nielsen to start measuring the performance of ads like a television network would.

Will Snapchat’s revenues ever measure up to its user growth and marketing promise to advertisers? For now, the Snapchat monetization challenge remains, and investors are divided on the company’s future prospects.

SEE ALSO: Actually, Tesla doesn't get that much money from the government

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Advertisers have spoken, and Instagram is on the rise.

Instagram has overtaken Twitter as the preferred platform for social media ad campaigns, according to a new study by Comcast-owned STRATA.

The study polled 83 U.S. ad agencies on which social platforms clients preferred for their campaigns, and 63% selected Instagram as their most likely choice, compared to just 56% for Twitter. YouTube placed ahead of Instagram at 67%, though Facebook blew all of its competition out of the water at 96%.

Notably, Snapchat was not included in the study.

Instagram has eclipsed 200,000 monthly active advertisers, and Twitter recently stated in a letter to shareholders that that it had 130,000 active advertisers.

There are two reasons that advertisers now prefer Instagram. In the last three years, Instagram has consistently ranked near the top of social networks among teens, while Twitter's relevance to this demographic has declined, according to Piper Jaffray.

Instagram also surpassed Twitter in users when it hit 400 million monthly active users in September, as Twitter's user growth has slowed significantly since 2014. Twitter now has 310 million active users, slightly more than the 302 million users it had in the first quarter of 2015.

Dollars are increasingly flowing from traditional ads to digital, as strong growth in mobile, video, and social spending continue to change the face of the U.S. media market.

Over the next five years, marketers will especially embrace mobile. Mobile will drive up spending on video, search, display, and social, and propel the migration of ad dollars away from traditional media, including newspapers and magazines.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report that forecasts spending trends for the major digital ad formats — including search, display, and video — and mobile vs. desktop. It also examines trajectories for social ad spending and programmatic ad buying, which cut across digital formats. Finally, the report looks at how spending on traditional media formats will grow or contract over the next five years, as digital, and particularly mobile, rises.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• Mobile will be the fastest-growing advertising channel and buoy spending on each of the digital formats. US mobile ad revenue will rise by a 26.5% CAGR through of 2020.
• Digital video ad spending is rising faster than search and display. US digital video ad revenue will rise by a CAGR of 21.9% through 2020.
• Mobile search will overtake desktop search ad revenue by 2019. Mobile search ad spend will rise by a 25.2% CAGR, while desktop search ad revenue will decline during the same period.
• Mobile display ads, including banners, rich media, and sponsorships, will overtake desktop display-related spending even earlier, in 2017.
• Social media ads, which cut across display and video, are seeing fast adoption. US social media ad revenue, which includes video and display ads, will grow by a CAGR of 14.9% through 2020.
• The rapid embrace of programmatic ad-buying tools is fueling a dramatic uptick in the share of digital ad spending coming through programmatic channels. Programmatic transactions will be a majority of total US digital ad spend this year.
• Unlike digital, traditional ad revenue will remain flat overall through 2020. Total traditional ad revenue will rise by a CAGR of just 0.4% between 2015 and 2020.

In full, the report:

• Forecasts ad revenue for emerging digital ad channels and formats like mobile, video, social and programmatic over the next five years
• Explores why ad revenue is flowing from desktop to mobile
• Examines the stagnation of traditional advertising channels like TV, magazines, and newspapers

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
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The time has finally come: Snapchat is going to start showing you ads between your friends' Stories.

The vertical video ads you see in Discover and Snapchat's Live Stories will be shown when you watch Stories from people you're friends with in the app. 

Snapchat declined to say how often ads will be shown, but a spokesperson confirmed that they would be skippable and will only appear between Stories. That means they won't be jarringly placed between the individual snaps that make up a single Story.

Snapchat's three kinds of advertising: Lenses, Geofilters, and video 'Snap Ads'

Snapchat has been successful so far with advertising in the main messaging component of its service. The company's popular selfie Lenses have been used for sponsored campaigns that turn people into virtual X-Men characters and giant taco heads. 

Snapchat's recent taco Lens (which was sponsored by Taco Bell, of course) was viewed 224 million times in the app over a 24-hour period. Snapchat says that the average Snapchatter plays with a Sponsored Lens for 20 seconds before sending.

Anyone can also pay to place custom geofilters inside Snapchat, which other users can overlay on their messages from a specific location.

How Snapchat's 150 million daily users react to video ads between Stories remains to be seen. Sponsored Lenses and Geofilters are optional by design — you have to choose to interact with them. But seeing ads in what has always been an ad-free experience (watching your friends' Stories) is something else entirely.

Snapchat now auto-plays Stories from people you follow, so the whole experience of watching Stories could end up feeling more like TV with content you want to watch and ads sprinkled throughout.

For now, Snapchat appears to be relatively cautious about how many ads it plans to show. "By doing this the right way, focused on creativity and doing it early, it allows us to be extraordinarily conservative," Snapchat head of revenue product Peter Sellis told Adweek.

Hollister, P&G, Verizon, Warner Brothers, and several other companies will start advertising between Snapchat Stories with video ads soon.

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Advertisers have spoken, and Instagram is on the rise.

Instagram has overtaken Twitter as the preferred platform for social media ad campaigns, according to a new study by Comcast-owned STRATA.

The study polled 83 U.S. ad agencies on which social platforms clients preferred for their campaigns, and 63% selected Instagram as their most likely choice, compared to just 56% for Twitter. YouTube placed ahead of Instagram at 67%, though Facebook blew all of its competition out of the water at 96%.

Notably, Snapchat was not included in the study.

Instagram has eclipsed 200,000 monthly active advertisers, and Twitter recently stated in a letter to shareholders that that it had 130,000 active advertisers.

There are two reasons that advertisers now prefer Instagram. In the last three years, Instagram has consistently ranked near the top of social networks among teens, while Twitter's relevance to this demographic has declined, according to Piper Jaffray.

Instagram also surpassed Twitter in users when it hit 400 million monthly active users in September, as Twitter's user growth has slowed significantly since 2014. Twitter now has 310 million active users, slightly more than the 302 million users it had in the first quarter of 2015.

For more, see the detailed report on digital media ad spend from BI Intelligence.Click here to learn more about how you can gain risk-free access today.

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Snapchat can be difficult to understand. The app is confusing to navigate at first, and it's not immediately clear how to find people to follow outside of who's in your phone's contact list.A good way to get Snapchat is to follow people who are already using it well.

We've gathered 21 Snapchat accounts, including self-made Snapchat stars, techies, and big celebrities, you should check out.

To add them, just open Snapchat to the camera screen, scroll through the list below, and take pictures of each user's QR code icon. Snapchat then instantly finds the user from your photo and asks if you'd like to add them to your follow list.

Chrissy Teigen slays on Snapchat whether she's joking around with John Legend or getting red carpet ready.

Username: chrissyteigen

Supermodel Chrissy Teigen is a social media savant on Instagram and Twitter, so why would it be any different on her Snapchat?

The new mom and wife of John Legend posts everything from her favorite new recipe for carrot cake to snaps of Legend singing. She’ll also post gorgeous selfies, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Rick Ross lives a fancy life as a famous rapper.

Username: ferrarifatboy

While DJ Khaled may be getting the most attention on Snapchat, his friend and frequent collaborator Rick Ross is another force of nature to observe in the app.

Like Khaled, Ross has reoccurring themes in his Snapchat stories you can expect to see frequently, like him vibing to music in the backseat of an expensive car or popping black bottles in the club.

Just don't expect anything short of extravagance.

John Mayer’s Snapchat is wonderfully unexpected and bizarre.

Username: Johnthekangaroo

Before you roll your eyes at musician John Mayer’s inclusion on this list, go watch some of his amazing snap stories.

The great thing about Mayer is how weird he is. Some recent examples of his bizarre escapades include shooting solo cups with a Nerf gun while “All By Myself” plays in the background or talking to his "therapist" about making his Snapchat better.

Snapchat, the popular visual messaging platform, is known to not be turning a profit. That could change soon thanks to a former Credit Suisse banker.

Imran Khan, who worked on Alibaba's IPO while an investment banker at Credit Suisse, was hired as Snapchat's chief strategy officer in 2014, and had only loose instructions for growth, according to Adweek.

The messaging company recently announced that it will be opening the floodgates for advertisers who want to capture the attention of Snapchat's young users by creating an application programming interface (API)  for outside advertisers. The API allows ads on Snapchat to be sold automatically by software.

This is incredibly valuable for advertisers, as 41% of all 18 to 34 year olds in the US are reached by Snapchat each day, according to Nielson data reported by the messaging company. Snapchat offers sponsored filters and vertical video ads on its platform now. The new API will serve video ads between users' stories.

"Different marketers have different objectives, and we just want to make it easier for them to buy ads on the platform,"Khan told Adweek.

"We want [brands] to have a place where they can tell their stories, you know, in a better way."

Khan says the millennial audience Snapchat targets so well isn't the only group of people advertisers could hit. People of all ages use the platform because they love seeing their friends' stories, he said in the interview.

Facebook, who has been pushing video content recently, has had trouble monetizing that content. Their live streaming platform, Facebook Live, is currently paying publishers to create content for the platform, but has not yet found a way to make money from those videos.

Khan thanked the other platforms for paving the way for Snapchat's new advertising API, as they made advertisers understand the importance of digital platforms.

This announcement comes just days after the platform announced a redesign of its app. If Snapchat's efforts pay off, it may have finally found a way to make a proft from its extremely popular platform, which is reported to be last valued at $20 billion, according to TechCrunch.

For more, check out AdWeek's story here.

SEE ALSO: These 4 stocks are set to win the streaming music game

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Brands are increasingly jumping on board with Snapchat by creating personal accounts, building up their friend count, and reaching audiences organically through Live Stories.

A new L2 Research study cited by Adweek  provides insights into what kinds of brands are joining Snapchat, and what types of content these brands are posting to the platform. 

• Brands post most often about Products (25%), Lifestyle (16%), and Events (15%). The large lead that product posts have on Snapchat is unsurprising given that sportswear (71%), beauty (57%), and fashion (54%) brands have seen the largest adoption of Snapchat. Moving forward, product posts are likely to increase. For example, unboxing videos – which feature people opening and reviewing products fresh out the box – are gaining in popularity on Snapchat, as described in a recent Digiday article.   
• Still, a surprisingly large number of brands are not yet on Snapchat. 70% of the 120 brands surveyed are now active on Snapchat. This suggests that a significant number of brands still do not post to the platform. As a result, Snapchat can still serve as a useful differentiator in brands’ marketing communications. By overlooking Snapchat, these brands might be missing out on a crucial touchpoint to reach their consumers. It should be noted that this finding is based upon a relatively small sample size, and may not be representative of brand activity on Snapchat overall.

Even as more brands jump on Snapchat, though, they must keep in mind potential pitfalls on the service. Some luxury brands thus far have stayed away from Snapchat out of fear that it could dilute their brand image when conforming to Snapchat's aesthetic and formatting guidelines — a recent survey cited by Digiday found Snapchat to be social platform where users were least likely to recognize a third-party brand. 

Dollars are increasingly flowing from traditional ads to digital, as strong growth in mobile, video, and social spending continue to change the face of the US media market.

Over the next five years, marketers will especially embrace mobile. Mobile will drive up spending on video, search, display, and social, and propel the migration of ad dollars away from traditional media, including newspapers and magazines.

BI Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service, has compiled a detailed report that forecasts spending trends for the major digital ad formats — including search, display, and video — and mobile vs. desktop. It also examines trajectories for social ad spending and programmatic ad buying, which cut across digital formats. Finally, the report looks at how spending on traditional media formats will grow or contract over the next five years, as digital, and particularly mobile, rises.

Here are some of the key takeaways from the report:

• Mobile will be the fastest-growing advertising channel and buoy spending on each of the digital formats. US mobile ad revenue will rise by a 26.5% CAGR through of 2020.
• Digital video ad spending is rising faster than search and display. US digital video ad revenue will rise by a CAGR of 21.9% through 2020.
• Mobile search will overtake desktop search ad revenue by 2019. Mobile search ad spend will rise by a 25.2% CAGR, while desktop search ad revenue will decline during the same period.
• Mobile display ads, including banners, rich media, and sponsorships, will overtake desktop display-related spending even earlier, in 2017.
• Social media ads, which cut across display and video, are seeing fast adoption. US social media ad revenue, which includes video and display ads, will grow by a CAGR of 14.9% through 2020.
• The rapid embrace of programmatic ad-buying tools is fueling a dramatic uptick in the share of digital ad spending coming through programmatic channels. Programmatic transactions will be a majority of total US digital ad spend this year.
• Unlike digital, traditional ad revenue will remain flat overall through 2020. Total traditional ad revenue will rise by a CAGR of just 0.4% between 2015 and 2020.

In full, the report:

• Forecasts ad revenue for emerging digital ad channels and formats like mobile, video, social and programmatic over the next five years
• Explores why ad revenue is flowing from desktop to mobile
• Examines the stagnation of traditional advertising channels like TV, magazines, and newspapers

To get your copy of this invaluable guide, choose one of these options:

1. Subscribe to an ALL-ACCESS Membership with BI Intelligence and gain immediate access to this report AND over 100 other expertly researched deep-dive reports, subscriptions to all of our daily newsletters, and much more. >> START A MEMBERSHIP
2. Purchase the report and download it immediately from our research store. >> BUY THE REPORT

The choice is yours. But however you decide to acquire this report, you’ve given yourself a powerful advantage in your understanding of the digital media advertising.

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Snapchat has responded to allegations that it stole artwork for its selfie filters and other graphics.

"The creative process sometimes involves inspiration, but it should never result in copying," a Snapchat spokesperson told Tech Insider. "We have already implemented additional layers of review for all designs. Copying other artists isn’t something we will tolerate, and we’re taking appropriate action internally with those involved." 

The response comes after a story published by The Ringer on Thursday detailed how multiple artists and designers have had their work closely copied by Snapchat's face-tracking filters, which the company calls Lenses. 

Argenis Pinal, a makeup artist, recently had his joker-esque face paint design copied by a Snapchat Lense with permission.

Russian artist Alexander Khokhlov got a lot of publicity in early May when Snapchat blatantly repurposed his geometric face paint design for a Lense in its app.

In the case of Khokhlov's design, Snapchat made a rare public apology at the time and called the decision an "embarrassing mistake."

Beyond Lenses, another artist named Lois van Baarle said that Snapchat had repurposed her fox drawings for stickers in the app without her permission.

“In total, three of my sketches were traced and used in the app," she told The Ringer. "My fox sketches have been circulating on the web since I created them in 2013. I’m guessing they found it through a web search.”

SEE ALSO: Here's how Snapchat makes money

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