Snapchat: A Guide to Make Your Creative Work Harder

The social platform is making a big push for your advertising dollars. We’ll leave the “why” to their sales team, but here’s the “what” and the “how” for advertisers trying to make sense of Snapchat’s unique offerings.

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard the eMarketer announcement that Snapchat is predicted to rake in close to a $1 billion in ad revenue in 2017 — a nearly 1500% increase over 2015.

Depending on where you sit, it’s fair to assume that your client, at least someone in your agency, or your 14 year old kids are talking to you about getting on Snap.

And though the perception is that it’s mostly teens and tweens, 7 out of 10 Snapchatters are Millennials aged 18–34 and 50% of all new users are 0ver the age of 25.

So if you’re not already advertising on the platform, we think at the least you should check it out. Here’s what you need to know.

The ad products: Filters, Lenses, Videos

(Geo)Filters

The Role (for users): Filters enhance the stories Snapchatters tell

People use geofilters to add context, richness, and flare to their photos. Filters can be national, regional, or hyper targeted as narrow as a single building. If you, like me, are a millennial of a certain age, you’ve probably seen (and used) custom filters at every wedding you went to this summer. This really speaks to how ingrained filters are into Snapchat user behavior. Filters, it appears, are the new hashtags.

Users can only apply a filter after they take a photo or video. So our job is to support the user experience while being as impactful for the brand as possible without being too heavy handed.

Creative Considerations:

• You can’t see the filter until the photo is already taken. Yes I already said that. I’m saying it again because it’s really important and bears repeating. So don’t assume that we (advertisers) can line up any element (i.e. putting a taco icon in the middle of the canvas so people can align it with their face. They can’t.)
• Paint the corners. The focus of any photo or video is generally in the middle of the frame. Which we want to support, not steamroll
• Remember Facebook’s 20% text rule? Let’s modify it for Snap. The total content (imagery+text) should take up no more than 20% of the real estate on the screen. The more we try to smoosh into a filter the more likely we’re going to cover up the photo’s focal point. And the less likely a user is to use it

For further reading and some visual examples, check out 11 Examples of Branded Snapchat Filters That Worked

Lenses

The role (for users): Lenses are fun, cool ways to be goofy without fear of embarrassment

I’ll be honest with you, filters didn’t come naturally to me. In 2015 I cornered a college intern at our company summer party and begged her to explain to me how to use them. Apparently it’s pretty easy. You just go to the camera and tap-hold over your face.

Lenses are different than filters because you can see what they look like before you take the photo. They’re weird — I think intentionally so — and the ephemeral nature of Snapchat means that even if you look hilariously terrible (for example, I once Face Swapped with an infant) the content disappears as soon as it’s watched.

Users will often explore filters without sharing (or without sharing on Snapchat). Every once in a while, I get a kick out of seeing what I look like vomiting rainbows or looking like a dog. There is also anecdotal evidence that users will use Snapchat as a content studio for posting on other social networks (for example, capturing a photo with a flower crown and posting on Instagram but not Snapchat).

Creative Considerations

• You can snap either photos or videos with Lenses. So consider making a lens interactive (i.e. it causes an action when you open your mouth or raise your eyebrows)
• Make it fun! But keep it simple. The Filters people keep going back to are both simple and goofy.
• Don’t forget about sound. You can add sound design to filters (makes sense for video) and Snapchat can alter the pitch of users voice
• Push the envelope of the technology. The filters that get a lot of engagement are the ones that introduce an innovative feature.
• On that note, consider making Filters that work with multiple people in the shot (if it fits with your brand)

Video

The role (for advertisers): Videos provide short brand-building opportunities to a highly engaged audience

Snapchat Videos are maximum :10 seconds and are immediately skippable.

Videos live in 2 places: inside daily Discover editions that publishers own as well as ‘interstitials’ between Stories, both Live and your in feed of people you follow.

One thing before we jump into creative considerations: Be mindful of frequency caps. I’ve been seeing two ads on repeat non stop in my Story feed recently and they’ve been driving me crazy.

Creative Considerations

• Rule #1: Whatever you do, it needs to look native to the platform.
• Snapchatters are primed to skip videos after 2 seconds or less. So it’s important to get thematic branding elements (not necessarily the logo) upfront
• Speaking of which…if you don’t need the full 10 seconds, don’t take it. Snapchat is pushing advertisers to limit to :05 to :07 for Stories
• Don’t overproduce the content. Actually looking a little rougher/underproduced is better. (See Rule #1)
• Standard 16x9? Forget about it. You HAVE to shoot vertical..
• Sound or no sound? Make sure it work for both. A little over 60% of videos have sound on which is much higher than on Facebook, but 40% no sound means the story still needs to work even if its muted

The Drawbacks & Watch Outs (You Knew They Were Coming):

There’s no sharing functionality on Snapchat which means you can’t “go viral”. But honestly so few ad campaigns go viral anyway that I wouldn’t worry about it.

I know your gut instinct is to post organically. If you have a strong and consistent idea, then go for it. But you have to commit. If you just dip your toe into the water odds are your content will have a very high cost per view.

It’s been talked about plenty, but it’s worth mentioning. Targeting and measurement aren’t as robust as they are on, say, Instagram. But Snapchat is constantly evolving so by the time you read this, capabilities might have totally changed.

Speaking of which, Instagram Stories is the elephant in the room. We’ll be keeping a close eye on how it continues to evolve to compete with Snapchat.

And There You Have It

Add @theweilshow on Snapchat and let me know what kind of lens you want to see me in next!