WPP is spending $70 million on Snapchat ads

Reuters/Ruben Sprich

On behalf of its clients, ad giant WPP is spending about $70 million (£56 million) with Snapchat, the company's chief executive Martin Sorrell said on Tuesday at the UBS Media and Communications Conference, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The figure is just a pinch of the money it spends on other digital platforms — in October Sorrell said WPP will spend $5 billion (£4 billion) with Google this year, up from $4 billion (£3.2 billion) in 2015. That year the company spent $1 billion (£800 million) with Facebook.

At the conference, Sorrell also said that WPP will continue to increase its spending with Facebook, which has been "trying to undermine Snapchat."

The $70 million represents a sizeable chunk of Snapchat's total ad revenues: its parent company Snap Inc., which is currently preparing for an IPO, told investors that it expects to make $250 million to $350 million in advertising revenue this year.

That figure could grow to almost $1 billion (£795 million) by 2017 according to analysts at eMarketer, TechCrunch reported: " a jump it [eMarketer] attributes to Snapchat’s ability to reach younger millennials, a wider ad portfolio, and ad targeting improvements."

It's not clear whether Snap is profitable. Its main business is advertising in the Snapchat app, which more than 150 million daily users. But Snap recently rebranded itself as a camera company and started selling camera-equipped sunglasses called Spectacles

NOW WATCH: Watch the Air Force drop 8 armored Humvees out of a plane from 5,000 feet