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Snapchat boss: No worries about social media ban
Snap Inc's new local managing director, Ryan Ferguson, isn't too worried about the looming teen social media ban -- he claims the platform has always been proactive in protecting teens.
In his first interview since taking on the job, Ferguson tells Mumbrella that everything is business as usual.
Last November, the federal government passed the Online Safety Act, banning under-16s from most social media platforms. The platforms were given 12 months to get their ducks in order, or face fines of up to $50 million when the Act comes into effect this December.
As Snapchat falls under the blanket ban, Ferguson — who only started in the role in December — says the platform will work closely with the government to ensure it is following the letter of the law. But, between now and December, there are still a “ton of things” that “we just don’t know”, including what the government specifically defines as social media.
“We need to ask ‘what is social media’,” he tells Mumbrella. “At the end of the day, we’re going to work with the government to better understand what they see as social media, and work within that scope.”
Interesting then, that Snapchat has since its 2011 launch asked itself the same question. What is social media?
On Snapchat’s launch, founders Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel said they hated social media, and wanted to created a platform that didn’t have the perfect Kodak moments and pressure to perform. It has long tried to differentiate itself from social media — a message that global CCO, Colleen DeCourcy, shared with Mumbrella last year.
“This differentiation has always been there,” she told Mumbrella last March. “I always joke that we’re the best known, but least understood. We’ve tried to be different from day one.”
Under her leadership, Snapchat launched a global brand platform — ‘Less Social Media, More Snapchat’ — which rejected huge ‘friend’ networks, competition for likes and carefully curated content. Instead, Snapchat was portayed as a place where users could just be real.
Ferguson says that campaign has been a “great success” and that its core truth will remain the platform’s DNA for the foreseeable future.
The government also has “more than 30” tests going on “as we speak” around the social media ban, but Ferguson said the platforms are being left in the dark about the findings.
“We are waiting on the government to actually share what the learnings are from testing, to better understand how to actually execute within the letter of the law,” he says. “With that learning, we’ll then better understand how we can actually build to it. But we’ve got absolute plans to lean in and make sure we’re on the right side of the law.”
Despite some quirky innovations that have received backlash over the years, such as the introduction of Snap Maps in 2017, he also claims the platform has been proactive in keeping teenagers safe throughout its 14-year history.
Most recently, it launched a Council for Digital Wellbeing, that called on 14-16 year olds to “help build a more positive digital world”.
It also has safety and privacy settings on default for those under 18, with the ‘Family Centre’ allowing parents and caregivers to further monitor platform usage; it has features safeguarding against sextortion and bullying; and it created a ‘Creative Council’ with industry leaders to develop solutions to address users’ mental health and diversity.
Ryan Ferguson
Ferguson says Snapchat is still expanding and locally putting resources into moderation, trust, and safety.
“I’m pretty proud about the moderation piece, as you’ll know there’s a lot of pressure at the moment from other platforms removing themselves from moderation, but that’s a space we’re actually doubling down into.”
He says it is business as usual for Snapchat’s local team, with the Sydney office soon to be renovated to make space for more staff. The current local headcount is over 70, with plans to make enough room for 94. Ferguson says the expansion is only possible because of the platform’s “consistent growth”.
Snapchat currently has over 8 million users in Australia, and claims to reach 90% of Gen Z — 13-24 year olds — which is its core audience.
“That requires us to obviously invest further into the product and everything around it,” Ferguson says.
One of the investments Ferguson is most excited about “in terms of vision”, is helping brands and advertisers communicate with the hard-to-reach Gen Z audience.
In October last year, Snapchat began the testing phase for a new ad placement — Promoted Places — in Australia. Now, it is being rolled out officially, alongside another new feature, Sponsored Snaps.
Promoted Places allows sponsored “places of interest” to put their logos on their locations in the Snap Maps interface, which hopes to help advertisers expand their reach and cut through with the audience. And based off the audience’s visitation trends, places can be marked as ‘Top Picks’.
According to a press release sent last December, the testing saw that marking a place as a ‘Top Pick’ drove a typical visitation lift of 17.6% for frequent Snapchat users.
“We tested this with McDonald’s, and they saw great success,” Ferguson says. “We know how important Snap Maps are to Gen Z, it can be how they manage their interactions in real life, so we’re putting an opportunity for brands to put their logos on their locations.”
Macca’s use of Promoted Places
The other new ad placement — Sponsored Snaps — will allow brands to land messages straight into users’ inboxes. This marks the first time the app has ever been commercialised in this way, according to Ferguson.
Through visual messaging, advertisers can send a video directly to a user, much like how Team Snapchat already does.
Sponsored Snaps will be “visually distinct” from other snaps in the inbox to not confuse users, and if they are left unviewed, they will be removed from a user’s inbox.
He says the key to these ad formats is that advertisers can meet the audience “in the same native way” that they are already interacting with the platform.
“This is going to create that native format that advertisers will understand, but also the community understands as well.”
This will add significant value to Snapchat’s advertising revenue stream, which sits alongside subscriptions to pay the bills.
Ferguson walked Mumbrella through the business’ commercialisation model, breaking it down into these two formats.
Meanwhile, the subscription service, Snapchat+, gives users access to certain new features — restoring a streak, for example.
“As the business matures and we generate other areas such as hardware or spectacles, that will generate new opportunities to create commercial models,” Ferguson says.
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Lauren McNamara was the associate editor at Mumbrella. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS. She left Mumbrella in August 2025.
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