Snapchat comms chief departs
Mary Ritti, Snap’s vice president of communications, is to exit the company, the latest in a slew of high-profile departures.
Snap
Ritti has been at Snap for six years, joining as its ninth employee and seeing it through its IPO last year. However, in an email sent to staff she said that she wanted to "take a deep breath and explore what's next".
"I’ve never been more passionate about a product or a company and I can say that this has been the most challenging and the most rewarding experience of my career," she said in the email.
She will stay on at the company until the end of the year until a replacement is found.
It comes following the exit of several other senior members of the company, including chief strategy officer Imran Khan, global head of sales Jeff Lucas and product boss Tom Conrad.
Reduced ad revenue
In separate news, earlier this week eMarketer significantly lowered its projections for Snap’s ad revenues for 2018, predicting it will generate £68.4m in revenue for the UK compared to the £104.8m that it had estimated in March.
Emarketer said the downgraded figures were mainly due to Snap’s shift to an ad delivery system which is about three-quarters programmatic.
“Snap rolled out its programmatic ad platform in June 2017. While the transition to a self-serve format has increased the number of advertisers, it has also resulted in lower ad prices overall,” said analyst Debra Aho Williamson.
“Programmatic ads are typically cheaper because the automated auction infrastructure reduces (and sometimes eliminates) the need for salespeople to get involved. Some advertisers report strong ROI from programmatic ads on Snapchat, but many others remain skeptical. They are concerned about the size of Snapchat’s audience and feel that measurement and targeting still lag behind Facebook.”