Snap Inc. Opens Advertising Opportunities to SMBs
Mary Lister — May 13, 2017 — May 13, 2017
Starting in June, Snap Inc., the parent company of the popular mobile app Snapchat, will begin offering advertisers a suite of self-service advertising tools.
For the past few years, Snap ads have been available to big brands through large media buys accompanied by a Snapchat sales rep, or third-party software providers that plug into Snapchat’s advertising API. To invest, your company had to fork over hundreds of thousands of dollars on custom campaigns, often executed and run by third parties.
In a move to include more brands, Snapchat Ad Manager will allow smaller businesses to access advertisement opportunities on the platform. Now in beta with more than 20 brands, Snap Inc. plans to make the ad manager available to advertisers in 29 countries in June 2017. The new self-serve ad manager will be free to businesses of all sizes.
The three new Snap business tools include Ad Manager, Snapchat Mobile Dashboard, and Business Manager.
Snapchat Mobile Dashboard
Allows advertisers to view ad creative as seen by Snapchat users, monitor live campaign analytics, edit campaigns, and receive notifications about key metrics. This dashboard can be accessed through the Snapchat consumer mobile application.
Ad Manager
Buy, manage, optimize, and report on campaigns for all Snap Ad types, including video, app install, long-form video and web view. Organize targeting capabilities, goal-based bidding for swipes or installs and assets like video creative or audience lists like emails and mobile IDs.
Business Manager
Change billing contacts, manage permissions for team members and multiple ad accounts—an opening for agencies to add a platform to their roster.
Snapchat ads seem to be taking a page out of Facebook’s playbook after releasing demographic, lookalike, and device-matching targeting last year. More recently, they released a lighter form of retargeting and results-based bidding; all of these features will be on the self-serve ad manager. This move is expected to significantly grow Snap, Inc.’s ad business, which is projected to reach $ 1 billion this year, the first since going public.
Adding Snap Ads to Your Marketing Strategy
According to users in beta, the ad manager is relatively self-explanatory and encompassing. Snap ad formats will include:
Snap Ad: the most basic option, an up-to 10-second vertical video.
Ad + Article: provides the same multimedia canvas as what is currently featured in the discover section of the app. Articles can include text, in-line videos, gifs, and galleries. These can be run in publisher stories and shows.
Ad + App Install: swipe to open an embedded app store page and tap to install the app in the background. Seamless and simple!
Ad + Long-Form Video: combine a teaser with a swipe to reveal a short film or full-length trailer, these campaigns can be run anywhere on the app.
Ad + Web View: Swipe from the ad to the site for easy and almost instantaneous access. These can also be run anywhere on the app.
Measuring the Impact of Snap Ads
While creating high-quality video ads can be difficult for SMBs, there are more options! Sponsored geofilters and sponsored lenses will also be available through the ad manager. Geofilters are available on-demand at a select location, for an event, for high-traffic shared spaces, at chain retail locations, and nationally.
Snap currently utilizes first and third party tracking to determine the success of campaigns, with a handful of set measurement metrics.
Viewability: how much attention your ad received.
Reach: how many Snapchatters saw your ad and their demographic information.
Resonance: how Snapchatters thought or felt based on your ad.
Reaction: the impact the ad had on in-store traffic and sales.
Verification: how many times your ad was served with tracking support.
While it’s not yet time to divert ad spend from AdWords or Facebook, this is a unique and high-engagement set of ad formats on a platform with a growing user base. Stay tuned for more from Snapchat!
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