Snapchat Advertising is Coming. Are You Ready?

Snapchat is the newest exciting platform which has launched advertising opportunities and we will hear more and more about it in the next months. It is definitely still a very fresh and unexplored territory by advertisers, except for a few big brands. This is what makes it exciting as a lot of opportunities lie there.

The problem with new products is usually the risk of overspending and not reaching the right audience, not getting the right content straight away and the unavoidable platform glitches and rapid changes.

Despite the risk, soon Snapchat will be part of the relevant world of PPC and we as marketers must find our way to reach people there.

How does Snapchat advertising work?

At the moment Snapchat advertising is not available as a self-service option, but from June its parent company Snap Inc. will start offering advertising to all users through new PPC management solutions. Until now to get your ads on Snapchat you had to contact their sales team via enquiry and send over your content to them to create ads.

Snap Inc is launching Mobile Ad Manager, which will be available as an app in which advertisers would preview, pause, edit and manage their ads on Snapchat. A Business Manager tool will allow managing permissions of team members, billing and managing of multiple Snapchat accounts.

Soon advertisers will have access to Snapchat Advertising Manager, an ad building platform similar to the Ad Builder of Facebook. From Snapchat’s website we can see that targeting available will be similar to what Facebook offers. Way too similar.

Targeting options are:

1. Lifestyle categories. Based on the data collected from the platform, Snapchat offers 60 interest categories like parenting, political news, music festivals, and more based on signals like which content Snapchatters watch on the platform.



1. Demographics. This is the most interesting one, as I am curious on what Snapchat can offer to compete with Facebook. Hints that language, graduating school, parenting and household income will be available as targeting filters are making me impatient.

Location. Country, state, region or city will all be available as targeting filters.
Device Attributes. Like Facebook targeting by device, operating system, carrier, and cellular connectivity will be available.

Custom Audiences.

Snapchat introduces almost the same options which Facebook has at the moment - Remarking to lists of contacts, lookalike audiences and Snapengagement Audiences(users who have interacted with Snap Ads, Geofilters, or Lenses in your past campaigns.) Remarketing to web visitors with cookies will not be available.

Partners Audiences.

Another exciting feature is audiences, developed with partners. In Partnership with Oracle(Datalogix Shopper) there will be 85 shopper audiences such as luxury apparel shoppers, pet owners, and business travellers based on offline purchase behaviour.

ComScore TV viewers audiences will offer 33 predefined and targetable comScore audiences based on TV and movie viewership.

In partnership with PlaceIQ, Snapchat will allow advertisers to reach Snapchatters based on the places that consumers visit over the course of their day, like restaurants, retail stores, auto dealerships, and cinemas.

Ad Formats
1. Snap Ad - Up to 10-second vertical video, with the option to add an interactive element one swipe away. This would be challenging for many businesses as the short video must be polished and engaging to capture fickle Snapchatters’ attention.
1. Snap Ad + Article - Articles can include text, in-line videos that autoplay, animated GIFs, as well as images and galleries.
1. App Install - One swipe opens an embedded App Store or Google Play Store page. One tap later, the app installs in the background.
1. Long Form Video - This can be trailer or how-to video. It has to be minimum 15 seconds and it is giving an opportunity to skip or watch the entire one.

Web View. This ad format pre-loads the website an advertiser chooses and allows then the user to swipe in order to access the website. An example is a campaign by Under Armour with a website of a game which allows users to play in Snapchat.

Other types of ad format are sponsored Geofilters and Lenses. The Geofilters are filters available to users in locations chosen by the advertisers. For example, while rinding an Uber you have access to bunch of personaliser Uber related filters on Snapchat.

Lenses are very interactive as they allow users to play with the ad( it can be a mask, a character dress up, etc.) and create videos and selfies. An example would be Coca Cola and their Caribbean Carnival lenses which were part of their That is Gold Campaign on Snapchat.

More to come from Snapchat in the following months. We are living in truly exciting times for paid online. Until Snapchat releases more on the new advertising opportunities, have patience and happy targeting!