In a world where Facebook rules supreme, it can be challenging for advertisers to think outside of the Newsfeed when seeking efficient prospecting growth; that’s where Snapchat comes in. Designed for a mobile-first generation, Snapchat offers advertisers a place to reach youthful audiences at tremendous scale. Here are five advantages of Snapchat that should be brought to your next media planning discussion:
1. Reach an Underserved & Highly Engaging Demographic
When proposing Snapchat as a new option for a media plan, consider how this platform is positioned to reach a unique group of young users, with 78% of internet users ages 18-24 using Snapchat. The buying power is there for these users as well, with Gen Z having an estimated 143 billion dollar buying power in the United States in 2018. Sometimes it’s not enough to simply reach users. Advertisers want to ensure audiences are engaged with the ads their creative teams have worked hard to develop and Snapchat excels in this regard. In Piper Jaffary’s latest “Taking Stock with Teens” survey, Snapchat had an engagement rate of 81%, compared with Facebook’s 31%. Additionally, while 85% of Facebook videos are watched on mute, 60% of Snap Ads are watched with audio turned on. This data supports that Snapchat’s users are active and are more likely to engage with content.
Snapchat offers an audience building tool, allowing for easy inclusions and exclusions of your target group. The tool lets advertisers reach audiences based on CRM data, interests, location, demographics, and how they’ve interacted with competitor brands. With the installation of the Snapchat pixel, advertisers can get the most out of these audience learnings, by tracking what action a user takes after seeing their ad, as well as gaining the ability to measure the cross-device impact of their campaigns.
2. Unique Ad Formats
Snapchat offers three key objectives to frame campaigns around: awareness, consideration, and conversions. It also offers other nuanced objectives such as app installs or lead generation, which compete against Facebook’s ad objective offerings. Under these objectives, you can create content for three main ad formats:
- Single Image or Video Ads. These are full-screen ads that appear in-between users’ stories. This format is ideal if you are prompting the user to take an action like swiping to your website or downloading an app.
- Collection Ads. These ads also appear in users’ stories and showcase a series of products which gives users an avenue to browse a selection of different shoppable items, and it’s perfect for conversion objectives.
- Story Ads. This format is comprised of a series of three to 20 images, or videos, that live alongside other popular content. Content is tailored to the users’ preferences within the “Discover” section of the app and has the benefit of appearing native.
There are additional “big ticket” formats that are, while more expensive, extremely engaging. These special formats include AR Lenses (which allow advertisers to create interactive moments with augmented reality), Filter Ads (which are creative overlays that can be applied over Snaps), and Commercial Ads that are non-skippable for six seconds and found within Snapchat's Curated Content. These formats are perfect for sporting events, holiday campaigns, or any other time you want to stand out with an interactive unit.
3. Achieve Efficiency Across Upper and Lower Funnel Tactics
It is forecasted that in 2020, 33% of US marketers will advertise on Snapchat with 87% advertising on Facebook, specifically. With fewer competitors in-market and 218 million average daily users, Snapchat offers the opportunity for significantly lower cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM) for campaigns. In fact, in Q1 2018, Snapchat’s average CPM was $2.95 CPM compared with FB’s $5.12 average, highlighting the efficiency that can be captured when compared with more saturated markets like the Facebook Newsfeed.
For retailers specifically, there is increased potential for driving campaign success through a Snapchat activation. Strong video ad formats, on-site tracking capabilities, and a shopping-affinity audience all add up to a formula for success for retailers who have a wide array of key performance indicators. With US Snapchatters being 20% more likely to make a purchase on mobile, Snapchat is especially enticing for mobile-only conversion campaigns. As part of its lower funnel strategy, retailers can capitalize on shoppable ad formats like the Collections ad.
4. Capitalize on a Growing Platform
In a fast-moving and competitive digital world, advertisers are starting to catch on to Snapchat’s growing potential. It won’t be long before Snapchat becomes saturated with advertisers, resulting in CPMs and CPCs similar to those we see on platforms like Facebook.
Last year, Snapchat’s worldwide advertising revenue increased 44%, to 1.53 billion dollars. In the US markets particularly, growth is accelerating quickly, with ad revenues expected to grow an additional 24.3% this year alone.
This growth can be attributed to three key business initiatives Snapchat has tackled: 1) Snapchat’s extension of their self-service marketplace, allowing more advertisers to enter the space more easily; 2) its positioning as an AR leader among social platforms, and 3) its improvements to Android applications. By launching Snapchat campaigns now, advertisers can garner creative and audience learnings at the efficiency levels we’re currently seeing, thus, better preparing campaigns to remain strong when CPMs and CPCs rise within the platform.
5. Enhance your Drive to Story Strategy
Remember how we mentioned that Snapchat users are uniquely engaging? That holds true for the level of location data users give over to Snapchat. From Geofilters to Snap Map, your campaign will have a plethora of location-based data to utilize in drive-to-store strategies. Snapchat can map all your stores and physical locations, which gives you the ability to target users around specific stores with custom in-store messaging. To take accuracy a step further, you can also apply demographic, interest data, and custom audience data to reach the most applicable audience that is within your store’s radius.
For a full funnel drive-to-store campaign strategy, your Snapchat campaign can measure foot traffic and then build a re-engagement audience to retarget users with stronger CTA. For example, your campaign can target a user who passed your store a week ago with a message like, “Come back for 10% off your next purchase.”
By incorporating Snapchat into digital media marketing plans, advertisers can capitalize on low CPMs and reach a highly engaged demographic. With objectives to match a plethora of campaign goals, Snapchat gives advertisers options outside of the traditional Facebook Newsfeed.
