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One of the dirty little secrets of the last decade in AR is that consumers largely don’t pay for experiences. Sure, there’s AR engagement around social AR Lenses… but consumers don’t often pay for them. Whenever money does change hands, it’s usually for sponsored lenses (B2B2C).
To put that another way, as our research arm ARtillery Intelligence often says, most consumer AR is brand-sponsored rather than user-purchased. The argument could be made that Pokémon Go achieved the latter through in-app purchases… but those weren’t really AR purchases per se.
Meanwhile, Snap has gradually but deterministically validated a consumer market for paid AR. Specifically, Lens+ is a subscription that gives consumers access to premium AR experiences, and it has ratcheted up in user traction and revenue since it launched in June 2025.
This most recently culminated in an under-exposed nugget in Snap’s Q3 earnings last week. The company noted that Snapchat+ (the broader designation that includes Lens+) has grown to 30 million subscribers. Though it doesn’t break out Lens+ revenue, this is still telling.
Heavy Lifting
Doing the quick math, 30 million subscribers could yield $1.8 billion in annual revenue. That estimate applies a weighted-average $4.99 monthly rate, given several Snapchat + pricing tiers. Again, some unknown portion of that revenue is attributable to the $8.99/month Lens+.
So what does that buy? Referenced above as ‘premium lenses,’ these go beyond simple selfie lenses and face fodder. Lenses reserved for Lens+ tend to be GenAI-fueled transformations where your likeness is incarnated in a photorealistic style or theme, such as a mermaid or supervillain.
As frequent users of these lenses – for testing purposes and recreation – we can say that the lens quality is elevated compared to traditional lens standards. The generative AI that often does the heavy lifting means greater compute resources, but subscription revenue can fund that.
In addition to a tangible ROI in the revenue lift noted above, there are second-order effects for Snap. For example, Lens+ payouts invite top creators to share the winnings. This could incentivize and accelerate Snap’s community growth – a longstanding north star in its platform playbook.
But the bigger lesson goes back to the market validation for paid AR experiences. This is the first meaningful demand signal we’ve gotten for this behavior. But the bigger question is how it primes Snap’s revenue diversification and business dynamics for AR’s faceworn era.
Smartphones to Specs
Sticking with that last point, it’s worth underscoring that most of the analysis above pertains to AR’s scalable modality: mobile. The question is if the demand signals Snap has validated with Lens+ reveal the user behavior it can expect when users evolve from smartphones to Specs.
To be clear, that evolution – and the ‘faceworn era’ we noted above – will be a gradual process. Even Evan Spiegel specified during Snap’s Q2 earnings call that he doesn’t expect Specs to be a mass-market product until at least the end of the decade. This was smart expectation setting.
But back to the demand signals around paid AR experiences, consumer receptivity could be greater in a faceworn format, given levels of immersion and dimensionality that are worth paying for. And for Snap, this all leads to the all-important D-word teased above: diversification.
It’s no secret that the ad world is in flux as ad-supported giants from Google to Meta shift strategies and diversify their revenue mix. Snap is doing similar with Snapchat+ and Specs, which increasingly go together. It’s about planting seeds for near and long-term revenue centers.