Over the last year, Snapchat has launched several tools and placements for advertisers, such as the Commercials, Dynamic ads format, and AR shopping tools. How have these formats been adopted by businesses, what results have they delivered and what should you know about them?
These formats have proven quite successful as its advertising arm has doubled its revenue, reported in the first quarters of 2021. Businesses, like adidas, say to have increased their ROAS by 52% since adoption and reached their target audience of Gen Z and Millennials.
Read on to learn more about each of these placements.
Snapchat Commercials
Commercials are non-skippable video ads for 6 seconds that can be up to 3 minutes long. There are 2 versions: Standard Commercials: 3 to 6 seconds long ads, as well as Extended Play Commercials that can last between 3 to 180 seconds.
Click on the image below or this link to check out Alaska Airlines Snapchat Commercial ad.
Snapchat Dynamic Product Ads
This format allows creating ads in real-time, pulling from producers own product catalogue. This format is not created by brand but rather automated by pulling directly from the product catalogue. An advantage of this format is that it saves time in creating ads that fit Snapchat’s size requirements, as well as that if the product goes out of stock or price changes, the Snapchat ads will automatically adjust.
Targeting is done using users interests. Adidas has been testing this format and Rob Seidu, adidas Senior Director of Media Activation in Europe has said: “Within weeks we saw a 52% growth in ROAS (return on advertising spend) and we have subsequently grown our investment. The launch of Dynamic Ads allows us a route to reach our target Gen Z and Millennial audiences with relevant product creative throughout the consumer journey”.
Snapchat AR Experience Ads
“Augmented reality remains one of our biggest opportunities as we look to the future, and we are investing heavily in both core technology and the community-facing AR experiences on our service,” said Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snap.
Many brands are adopting AR technology to market their products, such as Gucci or HBO Game of Thrones, amongst others.
The most immersive advertising offering on Snapchat is the Lenses AR experiences, which can be face lenses and world lenses. These experiences offer a “play time” – a time users spend playing with the interactive ad.
Face lenses can be used for things like trying out new makeup, jewellery, becoming a movie character or brand icon. Click on the image on the right to see the full experience ad video from Snapchat.
World lenses show up on your outward-facing camera. It detects and maps the environment and surface surrounding you. It is fascinating as users can actually engage and interact with the 3D objects overlaid in their real world. We have seen such use cases work well with examples of apparel, shoes and bags, as well as furniture, electronics, surfboards, cars, and interior design.
Snap AR features 200 thousand lens creators, 2 million lenses created with the lens studio that have been viewed over 2 trillion times and increasing every minute.
Snap is working with Dior, Gucci, North Face, American Eagle, and others, on branded lenses. In Q1, 40% of Snapchat users tried on filters on a daily basis, of which more than half were branded.
So How Have the New Snapchat Ads Formats Impacted Snap?
So many new placement types, opportunities for advertisers to market and brands to connect with their target audience. How has that impacted Snapchat’s revenue? For starters, the number of advertisers it works with has pretty much doubled. How about users? 22% growth and average revenue per user increased to $2.74, up by 36% YoY.
Furthermore, in that same Q1 2021 earning report, Snap reported $770 million in revenue, an increase of 66% YoY, with the most coming from direct response advertising.
Also, on another not so new note but increasingly trending one with the hype of NFTs and personalised avatars. Snapchat offers to create your own BitMoji which is essentially is your avatar, by taking a photo of yourself and thereafter personalising your look from your hair colour, style to eyeshadow all the way to outfits from Levis, American Eagle, Off White, Vans, Jordan, Ralph Lauren, NBA, NFL.
Are you wondering how Snapchat’s new ad formats could help your business reach the right target audience? Reach out to us for a digital ads services consultation to learn more about how we could help your business flourish online! You can also check our paid social media services page to learn more about Snapchat or other social advertising solutions.
