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Snapchat rolls out new ad products

August 15, 2024

Snapchat has recently unveiled a range of product updates on its social media platform – from more expansive optimisation choices that drive lower-funnel conversions to new brand-specific ad formats that achieve cost-effective reach.

“These new products and improvements offer partners compelling ways to reach the Snapchat audience,” the company wrote in a blog post. “And we’re excited to share more details here about how savvy advertisers can take advantage of a better together approach.

Lead Generation

With numerous major and minor product enhancements to the Lead Gen suite, any size business can turn to Snapchat as a destination to prospect for a unique and valuable audience. Recent notable improvements include an integration with Zapier to help automate leads reporting directly into CRMs, better signal usage to enhance our leads optimisation, improvements to reporting latency, and overall ease of use. This progress has amounted to significant year-over-year gains, including:

  • 69 per cent reduction in cost-per-lead (CPL)
  • 62 per cent increase in Lead form submission rate
  • 21 per cet increase in click-through-rate (CTR)

Improvements for App Advertisers

For app-based advertisers, Snapchat says it has invested in improvements across the entire stack and introduced new bidding capabilities designed for the mobile gaming category. The company has now expanded 7-0 optimisation to support app install, app purchase, and app re-engage purchase capabilities, and recently began scaling these products with its advertising partners.

A number of gaming app clients, including Roblox, are already seeing a 30-50 per cent improvement in ROAS on Snap.

Improvements for eCommerce and Web Advertisers

Snapchat announced in May that it was testing a Value Optimisation offering for app advertisers which allows marketers to bid on the basket value of purchases driven. Early test results are encouraging and indicate that mobile gaming and eCommerce advertisers in particular will benefit from the new optimisation. For example, Lancôme, a beauty brand from L’Oréal, leveraged Value Optimisation to drive a 27 per cent increase in average purchase cart size and a 4.4x increase in ROAS.

There was also success from web advertisers leveraging the recently launched Landing Page View optimisation to generate improvements in site engagement and traffic quality. For example, Wrangler used Landing Page View bidding and saw a 34 per cent increase in CPM efficiency. Landing Page View also helped drive a 3.8x increase in platform conversions. Compared to previous benchmarks, this led to:

  • 212 per cent higher ROAS
  • 80 per cent improvement in cost-per-outcome efficiency
  • Nearly 50 per cent reduction in bounce rates

Improved Takeover Products

Snapchat recently launched new top-of-funnel takeover products for advertisers: First Lens Unlimited and State Targeted First Story.

For marketers leveraging Snap’s augmented reality (AR) technology, First Lens Unlimited is an enhancement to its previous First Lens product. This new, high-impact AR takeover offers the first impression of the day in the first slot of the Lens Carousel plus unlimited impressions, frequency, and permanence in the next Lens Carousel ad slot. First Lens Unlimited has helped drive a 25 per cent – 45 per cent increase in incremental impressions for advertising partners. It will now be rolled out globally.

State Targeted First Story allows US advertisers to target First Story takeover campaigns to individual states or to reach the entire country with different creative for each state, as selected by the advertiser. This expands on the previous First Story offering, which was only available to target an entire country with one ad creative.

AR Advertising

AR continues to help Snapchatters express themselves in creative ways, and to build meaningful connections with their real friends. Snapchatters play with AR Lenses billions of times per day on average, and sponsored AR offers marketers the opportunity to create unique, innovative experiences that measurably lift their brand campaigns.

Snapchat recently announced AR Extensions for businesses, which extend its AR advertising products beyond the camera to all of ad surfaces including Dynamic Product Ads, Snap Ads, Collection Ads, Commercials and Spotlight.

Overall, Snapchat found that when marketers pair AR ads with video ads on Snapchat, their campaigns see 1.6x higher Ad Awareness Lift on average compared to video ads alone. And research from partners at OMD and Amplified Intelligence found that Snapchat campaigns that include AR in their mix drive 5x more active attention compared to industry peers.

AR Extensions is now in beta and will be rolling out globally in September.

ML and AI-Powered Creative Tools

ML is helping Snapchat create more engaging and fun Lens experiences, such as ML Scribble World Lens, which was viewed over 1 billion times in Q2. Advertisers can create their own Lenses using this proprietary SnapML technology, and AI-powered creative tools enable custom ML Lenses to be built in a matter of days.

Generative AI is also helping advertisers simplify and streamline the creative process. Marketers can now use the new GenAI Copy Generator to create headlines with AI, which is particularly helpful for brands looking to localise ad copy in non-English speaking markets.

“As we move forward, we will continue to focus on larger ML models, scaled signals, and performant ad formats, while leveraging AR as a powerful tool for brand-oriented advertisers. With many of the foundational elements of our advertising platform now in place, we look forward to making continued progress in helping our advertising partners grow their businesses and optimise their campaigns for performance across the funnel,” the blog post concluded.

Categories: Advertising, Articles, Social Media

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