Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel To Party On Daily Mail Yacht At Cannes Festival

Yachts and talk of flowing money set in the French Riviera. Sounds like a party any 25-year-old California native worth billions would want to attend. Indeed, that’s what’s in store for Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel next week at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, Adweek reports.

With an estimated 200 million users who are actively engaged with the mobile app, Snapchat has attracted the interest of major media companies and advertising agencies. While some brands have experimented on Snapchat with their own free accounts, others have paid for advertising spots within public feeds. A select group have gone as far to create their own daily content on Snapchat’s Discover network.

These media partners include Cosmopolitan magazine, Comedy Central, the Daily Mail, ESPN and Vice. The Daily Mail’s North America CEO, Jon Steinberg, has voiced high praise for the young entrepreneur and invited him on his yacht for an informal talk with advertisers, Adweek wrote in a feature story about Spiegel at Cannes.

"I love the guy, and I don't say that about everybody,” Steinberg told Adweek. “He's interested in ideas and doing big things and standing by your word.”

Steinberg noted to Adweek that Spiegel has repeatedly come unannounced into the Daily Mail's U.S. office in New York City. There, Spiegel asks for feedback on the Discover network and other advertising products. The close relationship between the Daily Mail, a British tabloid with an American branch and huge online traffic, and Snapchat has been evident. In May, Spiegel announced Snapchat’s new advertising prices at the Daily Mail’s advertising event.

And Spiegel has continued to meet with and secure deals with other large media companies, for instance attending iHeartMedia Inc.’s spring advertising event. “Evan is a true visionary. He’s bold, and he takes action,” iHeartMedia’s CEO Bob Pittman gushed.

"Evan runs the company like a startup,” the Daily Mail’s Steinberg told Adweek. Valued at $16 billion, the Venice, Calif.-based Snapchat is only three years old.