Snapchat Advertising: Is It Right For Your Business?

Snapchat cites 173 million average daily active Snapchatters around the globe. They also cite that their audience spends an average of 30 minutes in the app each day. (https://forbusiness.snapchat.com/) That is a lot of eyes that could see your brand.

Explaining a product that is strongly focused on images can be challenging, but let’s walk through some pieces of Snapchat advertising, how a few business have used Snapchat and the Snapchat market.

So, what does advertising on Snapchat look like?

If you’re familiar with Snapchat, you may recall friends changing up their selfie from a lens that makes them look like a dog to a lens that now incorporates a brand name.

This is one example of Snapchat advertising.

Snapchat focuses on three types of ads within their app: Snap Ads, Filters and Lenses.

Snap Ads are a vertical video ad that is served to Snapchatters based on a defined objective, audience and budget that a business creates with their ad.

Next, Filters are a way of being where your product is consumed, purchased or on people’s minds. But, what exactly does that mean? This means you can create a filter that a user can put over their image, and then during a selected date range and within a geographic area, the filter will be offered to users.

Lastly, Lenses are the most interactive Snapchat advertising example. They also allow reach to be on a more massive scale. Lenses typically allow people to take a video of themselves with your brands’ lenses over their face. This could mean sunglasses with your brand logo, turning a user’s head into a snowball or basketball with your brand incorporated or consuming coffee or a drink with your brand on it, for example.

Naturally, the next question is, has Snapchat been successful for businesses that have used it?

Businesses and Snapchat

Brands ranging from Bud Light to Benefit Makeup and Courtyard Marriot have shared their success stories with Snapchat.

Looking at Courtyard Marriot (https://storage.googleapis.com/snapchat-web/success-stories/pdf/pdf_courtyard_marriott_en.pdf), for example, gives some insight to a businesses use of Snapchat.

During the Super Bowl, they reached 6.6 million Snapchatters and had a total of 14 million views via a Snap Ad campaign.

Another success story of business use on Snapchat is from Gatorade, which used a sponsored lens campaign (https://storage.googleapis.com/snapchat-web/success-stories/pdf/pdf_gatorade_lens_en.pdf). They had 165 million views of their lens that allowed users to “dunk” themselves in Gatorade to celebrate the Super Bowl victory.

These advertising successes are great examples of Snapchat’s ability to provide a brand, the platform, and experience with users that builds the brand’s awareness.

However, there is no denying that for a small business these numbers would likely be a lot different, but with the ability to optimize a Snapchat ad, the ability to target your brand’s target customer is realistic.

So, what is the target market for Snapchat?

When using one of Snapchat’s ad products, they provide you the option to choose from over 300 audiences that are predefined based on what Snapchatters care about, where they go and what they buy.

Further than that, they also provide the option to setup specific demographics based on age, location, device type and more.

So who is on Snapchat? According to Omnicore, the majority of Snapchat users are under 34 years old (https://www.omnicoreagency.com/snapchat-statistics/). This is something to consider depending on your brand and your marketing goals.