Snapchat is Running Ads about… Ads

This article comes to us from the Speaking Human University Program, which gives voice to the opinions and perspectives of the next generation of consumers and marketers… 

Believe it or not, Snapchat is running an ad campaign focused on getting businesses to run advertisements on their platform. What is even more fascinating about this campaign is they are running these ads on other social media platforms creating a cross pollination effect. Why did they choose this unique campaign? What are the pros and cons of advertising on Snapchat? Learn more about these questions and if other social media sites should copy and utilize this type of campaign for their own platforms.

This campaign seems to have been running for just over a month and to my knowledge, outside of Snapchat, it is only being deployed on YouTube. They have three versions of the ad on YouTube: the traditional 30 second ad, a banner ad, and a search display ad. The video ad features Playbite who discusses how Snapchat helped their business grow and the reach Snapchat has to connect with Gen Z and Millennial consumers. Their banner ad takes a different route as its value proposition stems around spending $350 on Snapchat ads to gain $375 in ad credit. Their search ad is a bit more generic and focuses on being able to easily create, measure and optimize ads on Snapchat. It does appear as if this ad campaign will be successful for them. Within a month the ad has 4+ million views and their Snapchat Business YouTube channel has a different video that came out on the same day that covers similar topics and this video has 7+ million views.

Why did they choose this unique campaign?

I believe Snapchat chose this unique campaign for three reasons: 1) Money spent in Social Media Advertising is forecasted to increase from $68.45 Billion to $82.23 billion in the next two years. This presents a large opportunity for Snapchat to capitalize on this growth and increase their revenue. 2) This year Snapchat was the fastest growing social media platform with a 13.4% growth in new users, which can be very attractive for new advertisers to the platform, especially those looking for Gen Z or Millennial consumers. 3) Snapchat is not utilized for ads as much as the other big platforms like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Tik Tok, etc. In fact, Snapchat’s biggest rival, Instagram, is preferred by 96% of advertisers when looking at story ads. With all three factors in mind, you can see why Snapchat is looking to expand their ad revenue and shift how businesses perceive them as a more attractive advertising platform.

What are the pros and cons of advertising on Snapchat?

Now you may be asking yourself, should my organization consider running ads on Snapchat? To figure this out, let’s look at some pros and cons of the platform.

1. Pros: It’s great for targeting young adults and teenagers and reaches 90% of people between 13-24. Snap Publisher allows you to create ads in minutes. It has advanced targeting and allows businesses to upload their own customer lists, utilize lookalike audiences, and has a retargeting feature.
2. Cons: Measurement of views can be skewed because consumers can easily skip the ad and your organization wouldn’t know about it. It’s also not as large of an audience as other big social media platforms. Snapchat’s “share” feature is more complicated to use than other social media platforms, so it can be difficult for consumers to engage with the ad.

Snapchat ads greatest value is for businesses that are looking for the young adult demographic and for companies that can effectively use the “quick story” type of ads.

Will this strategy be copied by other large social media websites?

I do believe other platforms should hop on this trend. Snapchat seems to have had good results from the campaign. They have amassed 11+ million views in one month with just two videos promoting their platform. This means others will be trying to imitate their success. On top of that, social media advertising spending is forecasted to grow over $10 billion in the next two years. There are plenty of opportunities for these social media sites to grow their ad revenue and one way might be to invest in marketing your own platform’s advertising capabilities. The biggest question is whether these other social media sites will allow their competitors to put advertisements on their platforms. I personally don’t believe this will happen. Snapchat advertising on YouTube is unique. The success Snapchat has had will likely discourage other platforms from allowing competitor advertisements.