Snapchat's users don't hate ads after all -- at least according to a survey commissioned by Snapchat.
When the ephemeral messaging service announced in October that it would start running ads within its mobile app, Snapchat appeared almost reticent to let brands pay to promote themselves in its app.
"An advertisement will appear in your Recent Updates from time to time, and you can choose if you want to watch it. No biggie," Snapchat wrote in a company blog post announcing the first ad.
But accordng to a Snapchat-commissioned survey conducted by Millward Brown Digital, a division of WPP's Kantar, a lot of the people who chose to watch Snapchat's first handful of ads liked what they saw.
However, not all Snapchat ads were equally liked. Within two months of unveiling its first ad product, Snapchat introduced a second that more respondents preferred. The first "Brand Story" ad unit was placed a click-to-watch, 20-second video ad as a standalone post in people's "Recent Updates" feed. The second ad unit weaved brands into Snapchat's "Our Story" posts that curate pictures or videos people post to Snapchat related to an event like a college football game and stitch them into one longer post.