Crowd-distributed Snapchat Ads: A New Business Tool
Social Media
Posted 13 Jul 2017
“Does your company use Snapchat?” Most companies would say no. Even though Snapchat’s stock values declined after their initial public offering, companies targeting 18-34 year-olds might want to know about Snapchat´s new releases and the role they can play in marketing to the youth.
Social media developers are under pressure to boost their reach and attract more advertisers, and the latest releases of different social media apps all borrow key features from one another. For example, most companies would assume that “since Instagram released Stories now too, there is no reason for us to be on Snapchat too.” Snapchat’s main draw, however, is not its Stories or the Discover feature (magazine/news Stories), but rather its unique and exclusive user base.
According to App Annie, on a given day in the US, 35 % of Snapchat´s daily users cannot be reached by Facebook, 46 % cannot be reached by Instagram and 58 % cannot be reached by Messenger. In addition, Snapchat builds so much interactive content that users remain engaged: the average 166 million daily users launch the app over 18 times a day and spend between 25 to 30 minutes on the app. Finally, just 60 % of Snapchat´s daily users create more than 3 billion Snaps per day.
As the endless imitation game between social media apps continues, Snapchat decided to increase its revenue growth last May by expanding its ad offerings with three new products that take full advantage of the Lenses and Geofilters features that Snapchat users use daily. According to Snapchat, on average, one in three daily users play with Snapchat Lenses every day and Geofilters are viewed over one billion times a day. Snapchat´s release of World Lenses, Smart Geofilters and Audience Lenses create a platform for potential advertisers to create original and engaging content for loyal Snapchat users.
As an extension to Snapchat´s Sponsored Lenses, which let users turn selfies into ads, Snapchat introduced Sponsored World Lenses. Users play with lenses for over 15 seconds before sending them out. Those fifteen seconds can be used as a valuable marketing opportunity. The new World Lenses add augmented reality elements to anything you capture. For example, you can place a 3D object in your video that you can walk around, as if that object was real. Snapchat refers to this as “Painting the World”.
Advertisers can also create content using the rear camera. There are four types of World Lenses: those where you can insert a 2D or 3D film character or product into the photo (using the rear camera), action-based lenses that enable the lens to react in a certain way when you look at or tap it, interaction lenses that work like in-app games and environmental lenses used for ambient lighting.
Warner Bros. is currently the first company to test a Sponsored World Lens ad for their “Everything, Everything” film. Netflix and Dunkin Donuts are also in the process of testing out their upcoming Snapchat campaigns.
Support for 3D floating graphics is still lacking, but users expect that Snapchat will soon allow advertisers to use 3D technology support to create objects that users can interact with. For example, clicking an object can take a user to a product’s website for purchase.
Most ads to date have been created using Snapchat´s internal creative team, used by companies from Taco Bell to L´Oréal, but Snapchat ad creation is a long and expensive process. However, according to Snap Inc., their recent operational changes will cut the process of creating big campaigns from eight weeks to six weeks.
Before, advertisers could only buy nationwide Lenses, but now, Audience Lenses are available for purchase to regionally target audiences. Audience Lenses let advertisers buy a guaranteed number of Lens impressions for a specific audience. The audience can be selected using age or gender demographics, as well as through “Lifestyle Categories” determined by Snapchat based on Discover Stories.
The Smart Geofilters are an updated version of Snapchat´s existing Geofilters, which are already extremely popular. With this ad type, users can activate branded overlays when they swipe left or right. A Smart Geofilter will automatically add location information or other real-time location information to the ad, from school names to airport information. Warner Bros´ Smart Geofilters are currently used to feature high school names.
In addition to the three new advertising features, Snapchat not only managed to speed up their production time for Sponsored Lenses, but they also added the option to base new content on existing creative content to shorten process times further to only two weeks. On May 4th, the company also launched a self-serve ad manager for buying Snapchat ads. It features a Mobile Dashboard to track campaigns on a smartphone and a Business Manager site to configure roles and permissions of administrators. With this ad manager, Snap evolved from a sales team purchasing third-party ad-tools to a free self-serve app.
Advertisers will be able to buy, manage and optimize their content, view campaign reports and organize targeting capabilities. The Mobile Dashboard specifically allows a company to view and share their ads, review their live performance, edit or pause campaigns and receive key performance metrics.
Some limitations to Snapchat advertising do exist: it is difficult to test campaigns before their release, and it might be hard to shoot eye catching videos or make creative lenses that a user will not ignore, especially on a budget. However, social media advertising does not necessarily depend on the popularity of the platform, but rather on how original the creative content is. It is important to note that Snap ads do not have anything to do with a company’s Snapchat account and its following, and therefore a company does not need any followers to run a successful campaign. However, a successful campaign could be a good start to attaining a successful company profile with loyal followers.
By extending the engagement tools to advertisers, advertisers can see the value of Snapchat user interaction, despite the fact that Snapchat does not have Facebook´s reach. Snap ads are a new way of advertising created with these features, whereby the user becomes the distributor of the ad. Not only is a successful ad Lens or Geofilter more interactive, personal and engaging, but it also becomes unique and intimate. As the ad is disguised as user engagement and merged in with organic content, the user will not necessarily see the ad as an ad, but rather as a form of “playtime”.
