Snap Inc New Advertising Technology
By Giorgina Clavarino, Mindshare — October, 2016
Background:
Snap Inc has expanded its advertising offering by unveiling a new API. It now allows advertisers to experiment with ads using different creative concepts simultaneously, in order to optimize for the best performing creative. It is also working on building sophisticated targeting techniques to allow brands to retarget users that have already engaged with an ad.
Details and Implications:
Snap Inc is the hot ticket for many advertisers as it’s currently the fastest growing social network. Two hundred million monthly active users share more than 400M ‘snaps’ per day, making it the most popular and used social media by teens, surpassing Twitter, Facebook and now even Instagram.
Snap Inc has managed to regularly evolve, introducing new features like ‘Discover’, which provides daily-curated content from top channels and publishers; live coverage of events; video and picture filters. It is one reason why it has fast become a vital element in many brands social media strategies, reaching Gen Z with relevant content in a unique way. Until now, it was hard to optimise and gather enough data and audience insights for each campaign, due to the lack of tracking technology.
The introduction of the new API changes this. Snap Inc ads can now be sold by 3rd parties, and marketers can also expect a greater supply of ad inventory. Special events such as Black Friday are also likely to command a premium due to the supply and demand forces of an auction-based system.
Advertisers will be able to choose whether to work with ‘ad partners’ or ‘creative partners’ to deliver their content. The former will develop software for advertisers, enabling buying, optimising and analysing of campaigns. The latter will guide brands to deliver the best possible message to their audience with the Snap Inc vertical-video format.
The new API has the capability to deliver Snap Inc ads not only to the right people, in the right place at the right time, but also to continuously monitor who is viewing the content and engaging with it. This enables retargeting of the people who have actually engaged with the content with sequential messaging and avoids the risk of annoying the uninterested.
Snap Inc can now be added to the mix of platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Twitter that all offer advertising APIs which means marketers can now optimise their media plans according to performance on each social media network, including Snap.
Marketers now have the opportunity, with the help of Snap Inc experts, to narrate the brand’s story through real, relevant and authentic content to the right audience in a different way, optimising towards engagement and not just reach.
Summary:
If Snap Inc is not currently part of your social media strategy or media plan, then now is the time to rethink this, especially if you are aiming to reach for a younger audience. Snap Inc has proven to have a five times greater consumer engagement when compared to click-through rates on most mobile ads, largely due to the nature of the content and being perceived as more contextually relevant.