Snapchat ended Q4 2020 with 92 million DAUs in North America, which Snap defines as the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. This was up by 2 million from Q3 2020 and by 6 million from Q4 2019. (Snap doesn’t publicly report MAUs.).

Given Latin America’s unusual trendlines, it is not surprising that the region has four of the worst performing markets for ad spending overall (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Peru are all in the bottom 10) and yet six of the best performing markets for digital ad growth, including the top three.

In March, Snapchat rolled out its TikTok-like feed, Spotlight, to users in three more countries: Brazil, India, and Mexico. Before the expansion, Spotlight was available to users in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and France.

Russia, France, Brazil, Mexico and Canada will also all see impressive social commerce growth across a range of categories. As with so many other ecommerce metrics, however, the world’s data points pale in comparison to China’s.

WhatsApp payments are also being tested in Mexico. After India, Brazil is WhatsApp’s second-largest market, with 103.6 million monthly users this year, compared with 59.9 million for Mexico, according to our forecast. Earlier in the quarter, Facebook’s struggling cryptocurrency project, Libra, and its related digital wallet, Calibra, also underwent some (additional) changes.

We spoke with Rubén Salazar Genovez, Visa’s senior vice president of products and innovation for Latin America and the Caribbean, about how the company is working to further develop the region’s mobile payments ecosystem for our recent report, "Latin America Mobile Payment Users 2019: What's Driving Adoption in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Other Markets.".

Revenues in North America (which Snap defines as the US, Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America) rose even more, by 56.0% to $492.9 million. Facebook’s worldwide ad revenues were up 22.1% YoY, reaching $21.22 billion.