Sources: Snapchat to sell “sponsored lenses” for selfies which will cost advertisers up to $750K for peak days like Halloween, Thanksgiving, or Black Friday
Hannah Kuchler / Financial Times :
Context & Ripple Effects
This report lands weeks after Snapchat's acquisition of Looksery, the startup whose face-tracking tech powers animated lenses — so the product pipeline is already in place before a single ad dollar is booked. The Financial Times' sourcing puts a price tag on what had been a free consumer toy: brand overlays on user selfies, with holiday dates commanding up to $750,000 per day.
The move sets up a tiered monetization ladder around one feature: sponsored lenses at the top, and shortly after, a 99-cent lens store for consumers — the same face effects sold to two different buyers at two very different prices.
First-order effects
- Advertisers get a new premium inventory slot timed to Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Black Friday, with Snap naming a seven-figure-adjacent daily rate that positions lenses alongside TV-style event buys rather than cheap social ads.
Second-order effects
- Once brands validate the top of the price range, Snapchat can open lower rungs — consumer-paid lenses via the lens store and later template-based $10+ Custom Lenses — turning a single ad format into a self-serve market beneath the sponsorship tier.
Third-order effects
- If demand holds, lens production becomes a service economy of its own: by 2019 Snapchat supports an official community of about 100 lens creators matching makers with brand buyers, structuring AR advertising around third-party creative supply rather than in-house design.
The trend: Social platforms built on ephemeral, camera-first sharing are converting playful creative features into tiered commercial products — sponsored at the top, paid consumer tools below — with Snap's lenses as an early template.