It seems like a long wait, but we finally got access to the new Snapchat Ads portal (US, UK and others only).
Snapchat officially launched its new ad portal SnapAds earlier this year on May 4th 2017, the recently dubbed international Star Wars day, ‘May the fourth be with you’. Coincidence or not, it seems from our early testing that the Emperor himself may have had something to do with the construction of SnapAds or did he just copy Facebook?
When we first started using SnapAds we noticed some familiar names like; Ad Manager, Business Manager, Campaign level to AdSet & Ad level. Anyone that has used Facebook’s Power Editor will know exactly what I mean.
This is great, as buyers of Facebook can settle in quickly and start buying with confidence.
Inventory is super cheap at this point as there are less bids, so any early adopters are getting real value for their money even if the metrics are a little under par.
You can set the campaign level to three types of objectives;
- Swipe to Web – an upward swipe that takes people out of the app to a mobile website
- App Download – takes people to the App Store (say it like Schwarzenegger)
- Video Views/Grow Awareness – 2 seconds plus of viewing is counted as a view. Remember this is vertical video only
It terms of metrics, the most fun one is the new eCPSU a snappy acronym for Effective Cost Per Swipe Up – Simply put the cost divided by the number of swipes. With this the creative message can be tested and optimized, a great way to build funnel data from Snapchat and get into the tricky 18-35 demographic (The new Facebook haters).
Perhaps the best features of SnapAds are the Custom Audience (Snap Audience Match) and Look-a-like Audience tools. This was a game changer for Facebook, giving clients the ability to add their own data to enhance targeting and will give SnapAds a massive boost on being effective and getting an ROI. Snapchat collects phone numbers and emails, so matching should be as good if not better than Facebook. We found the match rates are slightly higher than Facebook so far.
The portal is available without any minimum spend or fee, so it will be great for small business and local business to take advantage, especially now while the inventory is so cheap and before it gets flooded with ads. Facebook CPM’s don’t tend to go down as time passes, so comparing prices could give Snapchat an early advantage.
SNAP Shares are currently trading at $12.76c as I write, and to test my faith in the new portal, I’ve bought in. Could be a bad decision based todays trading.
It’s do or die for Snapchat and I think they will succeed. A great looking portal with tight UX/UI, and thanks to Facebook for the inspiration. Restaurants need to get in on this as soon as they can. May the revenue be with you, always
What are your thoughts on this?
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Note: We are still waiting for Puerto Rico to go live as a location for SnapAds.
