Snapchat is having to hit "reset" on its advertising sales progress to date following the recent departures of two senior executives, The Information's Tom Dotan reports.
Former chief operating officer Emily White and VP of partnerships Mike Randall had spent last summer meeting with and presenting to brand marketers and advertising agencies. But Randall left Snapchat in January, and White left the company in March.
As one executive at a major agency told The Information: "Two-thirds of the people that we met with there are gone." The only remaining "third" is CEO and founder Evan Spiegel. That means all the hard work of getting Madison Avenue on Snapchat's side will need to be done again.
And that's reportedly what Snapchat is doing: Those left on the lower tiers of its sales team have requested another round of meetings with advertisers.
A "reset" may not be as dire as it sounds. Snapchat is in the very early stages of its relationship with advertisers: Holding second meetings is a good thing, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're having to go through the pitch deck again. But nevertheless, Snapchat hasn't filled the vacant positions of its COO and VP of partnerships — Spiegel is taking on more of the COO responsibility and the company is still currently hiring for a head of sales — and that might be worrisome to some advertisers looking for reassurance that the app is the right option for them.
Snapchat declined to comment on this story.
Snapchat is asking advertisers to shell out a minimum of $750,000 per day to advertise on the platform, which some marketers balked at, according to Adweek. However, an agency source tells Business Insider that the rates have come down to a "much more realistic pricing structure."
Meanwhile, Re/code reports that those looking to advertise within its new Discover publishing platform (where partners including CNN, ESPN, and Vice have come on board), are paying CPMs (cost-per-thousand ads served) of $100 — twice as much as most video ad products command online.
Those high ad rates do not appear to have deterred potential investors, however. Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba plans to invest $200 million in Snapchat at a $15 billion valuation, sources have told Bloomberg. That would be in addition to the $500 million funding round Snapchat was reportedly in talks about last month.
