Snapchat is now placing advertising on its main Chat tab, with Disney signing aboard as the lead partner with “Sponsored Snaps from Disney.” Taco Bell and McDonald’s are underwriting “Promoted Places.” Previously, Snapchat had kept the Chat tab ad-free. Users will now begin seeing “Sponsored Snaps” proffered by brands beside messages from their friends. “These new placements are a natural extension of the way people already engage with businesses on Snapchat and help advertisers expand their reach with the Snapchat community across two of the most widely and frequently used parts of our service,” explains Snap.

The company has “been experimenting with this idea for a couple of months, but the program’s expanding to more users,” Engadget writes in regard to Sponsored Snaps, noting that the brand messaging “will appear as actual chats, though the company says that Sponsored Snaps are ‘visually distinct’ from regular messages.”

The ad content will appear as full-screen vertical videos.

“If a person decides to leave a Sponsored Snap unopened, it will eventually be removed from their inbox. If a user decides to open a Sponsored Snap, they can reply to the ad or click on a link to learn more,” TechCrunch reports.

“Although local businesses have already been able to advertise on Snap Map, Promoted Places appears to be a way for national brands to advertise and showcase all of their locations on Snap Map,” adds TechCrunch.

“We believe features like CRM system integrations and AI chatbot support will make it easier for businesses to chat with their customers using Sponsored Snaps and we are excited to explore new ideas around customer loyalty on the Snap Map,” the company notes in a newsroom post.

Although it now boasts more than 850 million users, Snap’s “digital advertising business has been struggling and lagging behind its competitors,” according to TechCrunch.

“Our advertising business is growing slower than our competitors,” TechCrunch quotes Snap CEO Evan Siegel writing in a memo to employees that explains “the growth of our digital advertising business is one of the most important inputs to our long term revenue potential, and investors are concerned that we aren’t growing faster.”

Engadget says the pressure to grow revenue is heightened by the fact that “only 11 million of those users have opted into the company’s Snapchat+ subscription platform,” available for a $3.99 monthly fee.