Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel said the first ads for the ephemeral photo apps were coming "soon."
Spiegel announced the move as part of a conversation at the Vanity Fair New Establishment summit, in a conversation with Michael Bloomberg and anchor Katie Couric. Snapchat has yet to start making money off its user base, but it looks like that will change soon.
"We're cutting through the new technology around ads to the core of it, which is telling a story," Spiegel said. "People are gonna see the first Snapchat ads soon, they're going to be around our Stories product"
Snapchat's stories product, launched last year, is a series of Snaps that users can view in sequence for 24 hours. After that, the company rolled out "Our Story", a Snapchat Story that any user can upload a Snap to. Snapchat curates the best ones and sticks them in a Story that anyone can view, and has started doing it with events like College Football and Octoberfest.
Based on Spiegel's comments, it seems unlikely that the ads will look like traditional advertisements on the Web. Companies like Facebook have built billion-dollar mobile ad businesses out ad products that encourage higher-quality advertisements that users are more likely to engage with or share.
Snapchat was recently reported to be raising money at a $10 billion valuation. Part of justifying that valuation will be showing investors that Snapchat can make money off its highly-engaged user base. Facebook also sought to acquire Snapchat for $3 billion in cash, but ultimately the negotiations fell through.