Snapchat might be the app that every Millennial needs right now, but it is still paving its way as an advertising platform. While Snapchat has been notorious for not providing enough data to brands, it has been making changes in the right direction.
Advertisers often question whether their video ads will have the engagement level that will move the needle. When marketers realized that Facebook was measuring 3 seconds or longer as a video view, the inflated average view time led many of us to be skeptical of viewability for social video ads. In order to align with industry standards for ad viewability, Snapchat started to work with Moat and the Media Rating Council (MRC) to generate viewability scores for their vertical video ads. While their ads are skippable, they have ratings available for viewability, audio, screen real estate and exposure time.
As was once known as the “creepy” thing to do, it did not take Snapchat long before realizing they needed to provide advertisers with better targeting capabilities. Snapchat has partnered with Oracle Data Cloud for third-party data targeting and allows access into their API for email matching, content categories, and demographic targeting. Similar to Facebook, advertisers are also able to create look-alike audiences to find users with similar characteristics as their existing customers. However, Snapchat gives users the choice to opt out of audience matching from email or mobile device ID. There still is not a way for advertisers to use sequential messaging and retargeting, but there are signs that this will be available in the future.
Snapchat does not want to only work with big brands. So, it is launching a self-serve ad manager tool which will allow for an easier way of buying video Snap Ads. The tool is expected to launch in June and is being tested by various businesses. Currently, you can only buy Snap Ads through a sales team or third-party ad tools which can charge an expensive fee. The challenge will be whether smaller businesses can create compelling content to use on the platform that will result in high engagement.
Research from App Annie has shown that 25% of Snapchat’s daily users cannot be reached by Facebook and 46% cannot be reached by Instagram. Snapchat has created a home for a new audience, but are now under pressure to expand their appeal to more advertisers.