Snapchat Has Gen Z’s Attention In India; It’s Time To Monetise Now?

India’s festive shopping journey is becoming less linear with every season, and Snapchat is betting that this transition can help deepen its advertising business in the country and give a major push to its commerce ambitions.

New research by GWI and Snapchat suggests that Gen Z’s purchase journey has moved from discovery to social validation before conversion. While 70% of Gen Z consumers say creator content helps them discover products, 76% say instant feedback from trusted people makes them more confident about purchase decisions, while 63% share products with friends or family before buying.

That shift is particularly relevant for Snapchat, whose proposition is built around communication between close friends and family rather than just passive content consumption. Among its daily Gen Z users, 75% say they chat with friends on Snapchat about purchases while an item is in their basket, while 67% say the platform helps them feel more confident about festive purchase decisions.

For Snap India, however, the opportunity goes beyond festive advertising. The company claims a 10X increase in advertisers over the past two years and 3X growth in consistent advertiser spend, with the advertiser base expanding from largely new-age, online-first companies to traditional, offline and newer brands.

The bigger question is whether Snapchat can convert its strong Gen Z positioning and growing advertiser base into a materially larger advertising business in India, particularly as marketers increasingly demand measurable performance rather than just reach.

From Gen Z Awareness To The Purchase Decision

For years, Snapchat’s India pitch to advertisers was relatively straightforward: Generation Z is here, so brands targeting Gen Z should be here too. That pitch appears to be evolving.

The GWI-Snapchat research suggests that discovery is only the first stage of the consumer journey. Four in 10 Gen Z consumers actively seek opinions or advice before purchasing, while 63% share products with friends or family before making a purchase.

Snap is therefore positioning itself closer to the point where consideration happens. “The place where we differentiate and where we stand out from other platforms is our attention,” said Yagnesh Ravi, lead of ad solutions, Snap India.

Ravi points to Snap’s camera-first interface, communication between close friends and immersive advertising formats as differentiators. He cited Snap research showing that adding Snapchat to a media mix increased Gen Z attention scores by 22%.

The challenge, however, is turning that attention into incremental advertising budgets. Marketers already have established channels across Meta, YouTube, Google and, increasingly, retail media networks. High engagement alone may not be enough to shift budgets unless Snapchat can demonstrate that its environment generates stronger consideration, conversion or return on ad spend.

That is where the platform’s growing emphasis on performance advertising becomes important. Snap does not disclose an India-specific split between brand and performance advertising. Ravi, however, pointed to a global figure, where 75% of advertising was performance-led, while clarifying that the company does not provide the corresponding India numbers.

The Broadening Advertiser Base 

Snap’s biggest India advertising change may be the composition of its advertiser base. Its advertiser numbers have grown 10X in two years, while consistent spending has grown 3X. Initially, the focus was more heavily tilted towards larger and online-first brands. Over the past 18 months, according to the company, more advertisers across sizes and categories have entered the ecosystem.

“Two to three years ago, there was a lot of ‘why Snap’. Now the question is ‘how do I get my Snap marketing in place?’” Ravi said.

Traditional FMCG and mass-market brands, for instance, can use Snap primarily to maximise reach among Gen Z, while premium brands can go deeper into affluent cohorts. But the expansion also raises a harder question: how much of this advertiser growth is translating into meaningful revenue scale?

Snap has more than 250 Mn users in India, but user scale does not automatically translate into monetisation. To bridge this gap, Snap has been investing in a local team and expanding its advertising suite to accelerate monetisation. “We’re building for Rakhi, we’re building for Karwa Chauth, Onam to Diwali,” he added.

The festive research reinforces why that localisation matters. Nearly four in 10 Gen Z consumers begin planning Diwali purchases more than a month in advance, while 70% view the festive season as multiple celebrations rather than a single shopping moment.

For Snap, this creates a longer advertising window. But it also means marketers will expect the platform to deliver measurable outcomes throughout the funnel, not simply seasonal visibility.

AI Making Snap’s Ad Business More Efficient

Like virtually every major digital advertising platform, Snap is pushing AI deeper into its advertising stack. The company has built its Smart Campaign Solutions, which automate areas such as bidding, budgets, creatives and formats. It has also introduced integrations with AI platforms and is using generative AI more extensively within creative products.

The strategy has two distinct objectives: improve advertiser efficiency and make advertising itself more engaging. “One is on efficiency and how do you improve performance, and then the other side is on creative delight,” Ravi said.

Snap’s AI-powered creative push includes features such as AI Lenses and AI Sponsored Snaps. Ravi cited a campaign with Amazon Prime Video that allowed users to imagine themselves as characters from its shows.

This could become particularly important as advertisers increasingly demand more creative variations, faster campaign deployment and better optimisation. But there is still a gap between AI capability and demonstrated economic impact.

Ravi did not provide specific India-level metrics on how much AI has improved advertiser ROI or reduced campaign management costs. That leaves a key question for Snap: as AI becomes table stakes across digital advertising, will these tools create a genuine competitive advantage or simply bring Snapchat closer to the capabilities advertisers already expect elsewhere?

From Sponsored Snaps To Chat

Perhaps the most interesting part of Snap’s advertising strategy is its attempt to monetise the conversation itself. The GWI research shows why. Among daily active users, 43% have asked friends for shopping opinions on Snapchat, while 42% have sent a Snap to a friend specifically to ask for an opinion while shopping.

That behaviour gives Snapchat an opportunity that traditional feed-based platforms may find harder to replicate: becoming part of the consumer’s purchase-validation loop.

Ravi believes Chat could eventually become a meaningful advertising and commerce surface as users increasingly move conversations into close circles.

Sponsored Snaps, according to Ravi, are already delivering strong results across both brand and performance objectives, with the format designed to blend naturally into the platform experience. This is where Snapchat’s festive strategy and its broader India monetisation ambitions converge.

The platform is no longer simply arguing that Gen Z discovers products on Snapchat. It wants to establish that Gen Z discusses, validates and ultimately decides what to buy there.

The opportunity is significant, but so is the execution challenge. Gen Z’s growing reliance on trusted circles may give Snapchat a differentiated advertising environment, but advertisers will ultimately judge the platform on incremental reach, conversion and ROI.

For Snap India, the next phase is therefore less about proving that Gen Z uses Snapchat. That case appears increasingly settled. The harder task is proving that Gen Z attention, conversations and purchase intent can become a large, measurable and repeatable advertising business.

[Edited by Nikhil Subramaniam]

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